Wednesday, April 30, 2025
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Cecil Jackson-Cole: The first Philanthrocapitalist

Thomas Bristow
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Cecil Jackson-Cole: The first Philanthrocapitalist

For his latest column Thomas Bristow tells the story of the Oxonian who founded Oxfam.

Image Description: Oxfam on Broad Street

As far as charity shops go, Oxfam is perhaps the most famous. You can usually find some quite good things in their shops, and nearly every town has one, including my own small town back home. As a student, they can be a saving grace when searching for hideous bop costumes or more sustainable clothing in general. Perhaps it’s the eclectic nature of charity shops that we find so appealing. But if you had already guessed that Oxfam is somehow related to Oxford, then congratulations, your Nobel Prize is in the post. But more seriously, commemorated by a plaque of its own is Number 17 on Broad Street – the original Oxfam. Along with Italiamo, various Harry Potter shops and the unfortunately named Cambridge Satchel Company, it is a staple of the Broad Street frontage, but there is another plaque on the building, and this one just happens to be blue. It reads; ‘Cecil Jackson-Cole 1901-1979 Entrepreneur and Philanthropist helped establish the first Oxfam Shop and office here in 1947’. This then, is the story behind the man who helped begin a world-wide charity to alleviate poverty, and one which gives us access to many classic books for low prices. 

Cecil Jackson-Cole was born on the 1st of November 1901 in Forest Gate, East London to Albert Edward Cole and Nellie Catherine Jackson. He spent his childhood constantly moving around and never spent much time at the schools he attended. In 1911, the family were living in Grays in Essex, where Albert worked as a shoe dealer and Nellie was a China and Glass merchant. The family moved again, and Cecil left education at the age of 13 to work as an Office Boy, which he subsequently left in 1918. After the war, he became the manager of his father’s furniture and letting business, and eventually bought him out with his savings. In 1928, Cecil enrolled at Balliol College to study Economics and improve his business acumen. Aptly, Balliol is of course located directly opposite where Cecil was to found his first Oxfam. 

By his early 30s, Cecil was beginning to feel the physical effects of the tough economic times, and he entered a nursing home for a short while. Afterwards, he relocated his business interests to Oxford and lived just outside the city in Boar’s Hill. Here his neighbour was the Classical scholar Gilbert Murray, who was a member of a support group for the National Famine Relief Committee. This had been set up in 1942 in order to advocate for the Greek people who were suffering starvation from wartime blockading. In 1942 Cecil offered to be the Honorary Secretary of Gilbert’s subsidiary support group, the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. This was the original seed from which a global initiative was to develop.

At the end of the war, famine relief committees eventually disbanded, but Cecil saw a future for their work within post-war Europe. In 1948, it was decided that the successful fundraising of the charity could be scaled up. Jackson-Cole was a firm believer that business should involve charity, and for the next five years he was instrumental in the expansion of Oxfam. During the 1950s, BBC Radio appeals increased the presence of Oxfam in the public sphere. Cecil retained interest in the charity until his death in 1979, by which time it had far exceeded the borders of even Oxfordshire. Autonomous Oxfams had been set up in Canada, the United States and Belgium. Today however, it is a confederation of 21 charities, with its headquarters in Nairobi. Oxfam has even become the largest retailer of second-hand books in Europe, with around 100 shops selling everything from pamphlets to rare first editions. Though it is disputed, Oxfam themselves claim that the Broad Street shop was the UK’s first ever charity shop. 

Aside from Oxfam, Cecil Jackson-Cole founded many other trusts and charities such as Action Aid in 1972, to provide disadvantaged children with education. He had a pragmatic vision which pioneered modern philanthropism by effecting social change in a business-like way. It is a testament to his effectiveness that most of the organisations he founded are still around today.

Image Credit: Chris McAuley

The Smile’s “slightly crazed and uncertain landscape”

Tom W. McGrath
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The Smile’s “slightly crazed and uncertain landscape”

Imagine if John Lennon and Paul McCartney had reunited without Ringo Starr and George Harrison and made an album six years after Let It Be. It would have been both very confusing for fans of the Beatles, and very difficult not to measure their new album against the immense heights of Revolver or Sgt. Pepper. For fans of Radiohead, that is not wholly unlike what’s happening with The Smile’s first album, A Light for Attracting Attention. The Smile consists of Radiohead’s two most creative talents, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, plus jazz drummer Tom Skinner, minus the rhythm section of the band, Phil Selway and Colin Greenwood, and guitarist Ed O’Brien. It’s tempting to compare this album to Radiohead and find it wanting. There is little as epochal as OK Computer, as vibrant as Hail to the Thief, or as delicately moving as A Moon Shaped Pool here. But I will try to keep such comparisons to a minimum. The Smile is not Radiohead; they have a new name, a new line-up, and appear to see themselves to be doing something artistically different (even if some of their songs began life as Radiohead songs).

Despite no less than five singles being released before the album, what in my view are the standout songs of the album, The Same and We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings, were not among them. The former opens the album with a synth pulsing into view, slowly augmented by an array of electronic pitter-patters. Its sound is atypical of the rest of the album, but is also an excellent introduction. It takes you by the hand into the slightly crazed and uncertain landscape in which the rest of the album unfolds, somewhere between heaven and a bewitched forest, between all-embracing radiance and the uneasy sense that you are being played.

The Same sounds like a rallying cry for a popular movement: ‘People in the streets, please, people in the streets’ Yorke implores. ‘We all want the same’ morphs into ‘we are all the same’ – a realisation of the shared, fallen nature of humanity? A plea for peace – ‘We don’t need to fight’? Or a call for moral integrity – ‘Look towards the light, grab it with both hands, what you know is right’? Perhaps all of these things. The way the song ends on an abrupt and disconcertingly harsh note suggests prospects are a little bleak. Bleakness is certainly found in other parts of the album, such as Open the Floodgates, but, as so often in Yorke’s work, glimpses of optimism, beauty and a yearning for the good splinter the murk and the gloom.

We Don’t Know what Tomorrow Brings and You Will Never Work in Television Again have a rawness and fervour not seen since 2007’s Bodysnatchers, though Yorke is even more growly here. We Don’t Know what Tomorrow Brings, in amongst simmering, menacing rumbles from the synth that embolden the guitar scuttling above it, sketches creative struggles: ‘I’m stuck in a rut, in a flatland drainage ditch, and I’m drowning in irrelevance’. Given the number of high-calibre songs on this album, I can’t imagine this was a musical rut. Some themes are returned to, and stylistic throwbacks are made to Yorke and Greenwood’s previous work, but the sound could not be confused, really, for Radiohead. The album has too many punk, and sometimes funk (e.g. The Opposite), elements for that, although there remain great swells from string and horn arrangements, probably Jonny’s influence, that lift songs into higher, fragile realms more in the manner of later Radiohead albums. And of course, there is much noodling from Jonny’s guitar, but somehow it sits more prominently on the surface of these songs than is usually the case.  

In Free in the Knowledge these surging strings grow from the electronic undergrowth, accompanied by another terrific vocal performance from Yorke, which reminds me of 2009’s Harry Patch (In Memory Of). I think this song has some very evocative lines: ‘Free in the knowledge, that one day this will end’ leaves me wondering what it would mean to feel free in this knowledge, and if we ever really come to know, or appreciate, this at all. Likewise, ‘this was just a bad moment, we were fumbling around’, makes me think of the difficulty of knowing what’s a bad moment, and what is just bad. Yorke’s lyrics have always been thought-provoking, and those on this album are as engaging as any he has written.

Skrting on the Surface is also a contemplation on life’s finitude. ‘We have only to dive, then we’re out of here; we’re just skirting on the surface’ Yorke sings. Thin Thing, meanwhile, bubbles along until you’re hit by a wall of guitar, atop which you’re left anxiously balanced, wondering where the song is taking you next. I’ve found that, as so often with Radiohead, it takes quite a few listens to get under the skin of these songs, to know what they’re about, and let them say something to you. A song like Speech Bubbles seems at first so ethereal, so tender as to barely be there. But it grows and grows, as the song goes on and with each listen, and it emerges as a warm, woollen blanket wrapped between you and the icy world of which it speaks sinister tales. ‘Our city’s a-flame, the bells ringing … Never any place to put my feet back down … Any feeble branch to put my weight upon’. It is heartfelt and deeply moving.

Not all the songs are as successful. I find The Smoke fairly monotonous and uncomfortably restricted (as though you are stuck in a smoky 1970s waiting room, which may be the point), although the second half does become more expansive. A Hairdryer is also perhaps a bit too contorted for its own good. These would have made excellent B-sides.  The very concept of The Smile is a little confusing for fans of Radiohead and Yorke. Is The Smile just a lockdown project brought about by Thom and Jonny’s desire to write music and the reluctance or time commitments of the other Radiohead members? Or has Radiohead quietly become a legacy act, and The Smile its successor band? I expect we’ll find out in the next few years. Until then, we at least have a new album which is very worthy, for the most part, on its own merits. 

Image credit: Raph_PH / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Sonnet for Foxe by Anna Cowan and Ruth Port

Anna Cowan and Ruth Port
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Sonnet for Foxe by Anna Cowan and Ruth Port

Dear Foxe I sing a song of love to you,

Whose shell shines like the half compass of heaven,

My beloved Foxe, take this to be true:

We’ll cheer you through the race so loud it deafens.

Our college mascot, our own strong brave knight,

In plated armour, olive carapace,

A crown of laurel, for winning of all fights,

Ringed in golden light, primed for the race:

He’ll race to victory as if with wings,

Speeding through the grass; a blaze of glory

All other tortoises his praises sing,

And down the ancient ages rings his story.

The vanquished hare weeps in his dark burrow,

As Foxe the Tortoise leads us to tomorrow!


Photo of Foxe by Maeve Ewing.

Profit over People

Kobi Mohan
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Profit over People

Kobi Mohan delves into the devious dealings of a multinational corporation.

Last week, Glencore Plc pled guilty to charges of bribery and market manipulation in the US, agreeing to pay $1.1bn in criminal fines and forfeiture, including $700million in penalties relating to a scheme of foreign bribery spanning seven countries.

Glencore is a multinational commodity trading and mining company, ranked tenth in the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies. It controls over half the global copper and zinc trade, nearly a quarter of all barley and 10% of the world’s wheat trade, so if it didn’t help make the battery in your car or phone it probably still put the cornflakes on your breakfast table this morning.

As part of the scheme, millions in bribes were paid to foreign officials in Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and the DRC, amongst others, in order to earn commodities contracts and avoid regulations and audits. As one U.S. Attorney, Damian Williams, stated whilst delivering the announcement of Glencore’s guilty pleas, ‘Glencore paid bribes to make money’, and did so in the many millions.

The details exposed through the investigation paint a picture of an at-times cartoonishly underhand operation, with code words like ‘newspapers’ and ‘chocolates’ reportedly being used by traders when discussing bribes in writing, with one intermediary emailing a correspondent that ‘the newspapers will be delivered’ by them in person, and so-called ‘cash-desks’ being run out of offices in Switzerland and London as recently as 2016, where, one can only imagine, wads of cash and gold bars were stuffed into grey briefcases and carried nimbly away by long-coated, cigar-smoking, bowler hatted men with beady eyes and whiskery moustaches.

“As one U.S. Attorney, Damian Williams, stated whilst delivering the announcement of Glencore’s guilty pleas, ‘Glencore paid bribes to make money’, and did so in the many millions.”

As far as poor business practices go, this is certainly not Glencore’s first rodeo. Unethical and corrupt, or as headlines love to describe them: ‘murky’ and ‘sleazy’, tactics have been essential to the Glencore way since its founding in 1974. The NYT describes Glencore’s methods in the following characteristically cautious terms: “Among the hallmarks of its business approach is a higher tolerance for politically murky situations, which translates into a willingness to venture into countries where rivals will not.” The list of Glencore’s bed fellows bring together some of the most despicable regimes and crises of the last half century, from apartheid South Africa to the Iraq war- were there oil in Flanders Fields you could be certain Glencore would bribe both sides to make a buck, if only they were around then – thank goodness they weren’t. These days, when it’s not outright dismantling the foundations of democracy in developing countries, it still dabbles in illegal toxic waste disposal and labour rights violations, including the use of child labour, as well as regular tax fraud on the milder side of things.

From its conception, Glencore has been a company that not only places profit over people and planet, but actively disregards the value of the latter two unless serving some purpose in the pursuit of the former. Glencore founder Marc Rich once famously said of corporate transparency due to public listing that it “limits your activity, to be sure, but it’s just a new strategy to which they have to adapt”. The Glencore business model is essentially just endless exploitation and expansion, executed ruthlessly and with a presumptuous disregard for the law of any and all governments. Its founder created and embodied this model, making over $2.5bn with the company by selling oil and minerals on behalf of the likes of Saddam Hussein before going on the run for over 17 years having been indicted on 65 criminal counts, only to be pardoned by Bill Clinton on his [Clinton’s] last day in office. It’s unclear exactly how much like his predecessor the new chief exec. Ivan Glasenberg is, but considering this headline from a 2011 Times article regarding his conduct that reads ‘Billionaire ignored children’s pleas to stop toxic pollution from mine’, the chances of seeing either of them at Heaven’s pearly gates seems slim.

Glasenberg, who oversaw the company during the period the scheme was in operation, could alone pay off all the fines out of pocket and still have a neat £7.4bn left in the bank. Attorney Damian Williams stated on behalf of the US Justice department that bribes were paid by Glencore in the millions not due to the negligence, but ‘the approval, and even encouragement, of its top executives’. Reports of the investigation mention three executives, all unnamed who condoned and oversaw illicit payments and transactions. Two of the three are easily identified as Alex Beard, head of oil from 2007 to 2019, and Telis Mistakidis, head of copper till 2018. (Consider ‘Executive 1’, for example, as one unnamed exec is referred to in reports, who the DOJ said had agreed to the use of $14mn to pay bribes to Nigerian officials and who is described as a ‘UK citizen’ who, in their role, ‘had responsibility over Glencore’s sale and purchase of oil worldwide’ from 2007 to 2019. Who might that be? I guess we’ll never know.) Of Beard, Mistakidis and Glasenberg, not one has faced so much as a slap on the wrist.

Sensational details of code names, cash desks, ridiculous pay checks and CEO’s on the run can obscure the more plainly tragic truth of Glencore’s actions and their consequences. The reality is that these bribes propped up despotic regimes in failing states and disrupted the already fragile political ecosystems of many developing countries by compromising judges, politicians, regulators, and other members of those essential institutions that form the bedrock of democracy. In the name of securing lucrative contracts, dodging government audits and ultimately of making money, Glencore toyed with some of the most volatile countries in the world, ultimately leaving the poorest and most vulnerable of these worse off.

“Of Beard, Mistakidis and Glasenberg, not one has faced so much as a slap on the wrist.”

The DRC lost at least $1.4bn as state-owned mines were undersold to Glencore who made the purchases with the aid of billionaire Gertler who is accused of having made his $2.5bn fortune by “looting Congo at the expense of its people”. Whatever aid Gertler gave, he is still receiving royalties from Glencore, all in euros though, of course, since Gertler has been cut out of the US financial system entirely following sanctions placed on him by the US in 2013. More recently, Glencore has been enjoying the spoils of the former state mines rich in the increasingly in-demand cobalt and copper used to make batteries in electric cars, amongst other things. This has, of course, not be done without a fair share of tragedy and scandal, with 43 illegal miners being killed at a Glencore facility in just one week in 2019.

One might defend Glencore’s practices in developing countries in particular by saying that the company is just doing as the Romans do – doing what it takes to do business with already corrupt state officials, and domestic firms. Their profiting off of resources in developing countries like the DRC is necessary because the state does not have the technology nor the expertise to do this nearly as efficiently itself, and don’t the local people gain too by the jobs created by Glencore’s mines and factories?

“It is almost as if Glencore gains when these countries continue to be unstable and corrupt.”

Without getting into a full-blown denunciation of the neo-liberal global supply chain, to these defences of Glencore I have to say no. Of the jobs Glencore brings, they are often those that existed before that are unsafe, underpaid and nothing to be grateful for, especially considering what conditions Glencore could give some of these workers at the small expense of some miniscule fraction of the average $200mn revenue it rakes in each year. Also, the DRC may not be able to employ the same expertise as firms like Glencore but it’s worth noting that neither did Britain or the US when they were first industrialising in the 19th and early 20th century, and yet, somehow, they did it. Still, sharing valuable information about how to exploit these resources would be useful, yet the cost of such an education should not be the nation’s democracy which, invariably the people lose faith in each time another prospective election candidate sells off a slice of the country’s wealth in return for a hefty anonymous campaign donation. The damage done to countries’ political fabric might just be the hardest to recover from, since it is the health of these state mechanisms that determines how successfully countries can respond to concerns around health regulations in mines or the underselling of state contracts, for example. It is almost as if Glencore gains when these countries continue to be unstable and corrupt.

The fact is that corruption costs the world at least 5% of its net GDP and developing countries shoulder $1.26trn of this loss every single year. Ultimately developing countries, often former colonies, unstable and still grappling with the effects of empire and/or war, are bearing the burden of a scheme of which the lion’s share of profits will be wired back to the already-filthy-rich executives and shareholders of western trans-national corporations like Glencore and sit in Swiss banks without the people of the countries to which much of this wealth is arguably entitled seeing so much as a penny. Glencore’s model is a neo-colonial one, albeit more pragmatically profit-oriented, which places exploitation of the global south at the heart of its growth model and excludes its people entirely from net value calculations. Each penny made off a country’s resources or cheap labour was made at the expense of the future of that country’s people. The company is not the only culprit in such a scheme, but it remains one of the biggest to date.

Gary Nagle, who took over from former Chief executive Ivan Glasenberg just last year has said that Glencore ‘is a different company today that it was when these unacceptable practices occurred.’ With $1.1bn under the bridge, and shareholders quick to declare the matter closed, it appears little, besides the retainment of ‘independent compliance monitors both in the United States and overseas’ and a new chief, separates the old Glencore with the new.

In the end, without so much as leaving a dent in this year’s balance books, it’s hard to say how effective the justice department’s efforts will be in changing the company’s practices. A decade on, it seems Glencore is doing better than ever; indifferent, as always, to all but the profit margins.

St Benet’s Hall buildings to be vacated as students lament loss of “lovely community”

Anya Biletsky
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St Benet’s Hall buildings to be vacated as students lament loss of “lovely community”

St Benet’s Hall announced via an email to students on 2nd June that the Hall’s buildings are to be vacated by October 2022.

The email, from the St Benet’s Hall Academic Office, stated that, “Following a meeting of the Ampleforth Abbey Trust (AAT) on Monday, the Chair of AAT has written to confirm the Trust’s plan to place the two properties on the open market. The Hall will vacate them before 7th October 2022.”

Since 2016, the Hall has accommodated graduate and undergraduate students, tutors and deans in two buildings; the main building at 38 St. Giles, which the Hall has possessed under Ampleforth Abbey since 1922, and the building at 11 Norham Gardens, which was acquired in 2015. Both sites have facilities including a library, common room areas and tutors’ offices.

As stated in The Oxford Student, the loss of access to these facilities “does not confirm that there will be no St. Benet’s Hall next year” but the announcement “makes it unlikely that students can be enrolled in an institution without these provisions.”

The announcement to place the buildings on the open market comes after the University Council’s decision not to renew the Hall’s license as a Permanent Private Hall (PPH) on 16th May.

In an email sent to students two weeks ago, the University Deputy Academic Registrar informed that “the University has decided to start looking for alternative college places for students (to come into effect from October 2022).”  Students have not as yet been informed about the specific allocations of colleges.

For students who had intended to live on-site, the 2nd June email from the Academic Office reassured that “We guarantee that those students who had planned to be residents at St Giles next year will have accommodation.” This may entail residency at whichever college students are reallocated to.

Cherwell spoke to JCR President Julian Danker, who said that “it is important that the reallocation process takes all students’ needs and individual situations into account”, and so he would “prefer the University to allocate students as adequately as possible” to a college.

He acknowledged the uncertainty of this process for students, stating that “it is unfortunate that we have not yet learnt what colleges we will go to next year as we are anxious to integrate as soon as possible, but, given that the situation had been very fluid over the past few weeks, this is understandable.”

When asked about the students’ response to the announcement about the vacation of the Hall’s buildings, Danker said the news was “devastating” to hear. He went on to say that “St Benet’s is one of the most unique places in Oxford, and we are conscious that a precious institution that we are a part of is being lost.

“As a JCR, we also stand in solidarity with the staff at St Benet’s, who have always worked with incredible personal dedication so that students succeed, and who are now faced with losing their main source of income.”

Cherwell also spoke to current members of the St Benet’s Undergraduate body about their reaction to the news and the provisions the Hall has put in place for the next academic year.

A second-year student expressed that he is not worried about his living situation next year, having already signed a housing agreement to live out, like a large majority of his year group.

The student also voiced disappointment at the imminent loss of the “small community” of St Benet’s, and described the “sense of mourning” among the student body. A finalist similarly admitted that “the knowledge that we will never be able to return to the hall in future years is deeply depressing”.

A first year student quickly remarked on “stressful” feelings generated by the lack of specificity she considered the Hall was providing with regard to the plans in place for students for the next academic year. She criticised the fact that students have received at most “four emails over a six month period”, which she thought remained vague about the situation.

The student was sorry that this lack of communication has resulted in information being spread mainly through gossip, which has only reinforced feelings of “anger and frustration” among students.

She indicated that she felt that the Hall was failing to fully prioritise the students’ wellbeing due to this lack of clarity in communication. She nonetheless acknowledged the easy access to support services provided by the Hall for those particularly struggling in this “very chaotic” time.

Another second-year student said she considered the Hall has been as “transparent” with the students as it could be, communicating with the students as and when information has become available.

Multiple students expressed a positive response towards the JCR’s emphasis on student welfare in the past few months. One student noted the “relaxed” atmosphere within the Hall maintained by the “extremely hard work of the JCR, with welfare reps running calming events, and social secs trying to add some light-hearted humour” to the situation.

There was a common sentiment among the students Cherwell spoke to of the close-knit nature of the student body at St. Benet’s. The Hall usually has enrolled around 84 Undergraduates and 32 Graduates, making it one of the smallest of the Oxford Colleges or PPHs.

A second-year student described the student body of the Hall as “a bit like a family”, lamenting having to lose a “lovely community” she is “so comfortable” with for her final year. She finished by emphasising that she is “not sad to lose the buildings, but the community” which St. Benet’s afforded her and her peers. 

The Hall told Cherwell: “The Hall’s senior management and the Trustees are acutely aware of the distress of our students following the announcement last week about the Hall’s closure, and in particular of the high levels of anxiety and uncertainty consequent on the re-allocation process. Throughout this difficult period in the Hall’s life, we have sought to keep all our students, staff and alumni as well-informed as possible. We know how destructive rumour and gossip can be in a small community. From January to April, when much hard work was being done in sensitive negotiations with potential donors, it was important to respect requests for confidentiality. Since the announcement of closure on 2nd June, the University, in liaison with the Hall’s officers, has been working tirelessly to re-allocate our students, and maintain channels of communication, including with our students. We are very grateful for their efforts. Again, those negotiations with other colleges are sensitive and ongoing, but we hope that the University will be able to announce the results of that process as soon as possible. We at St Benet’s remain absolutely committed to the welfare of all our students and staff, both now and in their future years in the University.”

Image Credit: University of Oxford

Plenmeller House

Tom W. McGrath
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Plenmeller House

Under the covers, inside the walls,
The wind shuffles in from the West,
Rabbits potter in the grass,
And the pheasants lay down to rest.


This is the country,
As it is in itself,
Its shares in green hills,
Space and air its wealth.


The pipes are ticking again,
As we clear away the debris,
Revealing the front door,
And its old, simple majesty.


The old cottage and the grand house,
Mixed, melded and clinging on,
Against the turning,
Against the winter’s song.


I have seen the fight,
The floor and the damp,
I have seen the darkness,
But I read by my bedside lamp.


Firelight leaps upon us,
Primordial and true,
It’s what we are,
Not humans blue.


Return to Plenmeller,
Where the sheep are safe,
And we the sheep follow the shepherd,
Where powerless are the governor and the wraith.

A Drink by Edward McLaren

Edward McLaren
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A Drink by Edward McLaren

I rise from my screen and enter the horizontal darkness above its frame, itself over the river I do not see. Why is it that when I attempt to do serious work I am always accosted by something miraculous I wouldn’t see in leisure? Two adjacent torches in the distance, not glowering out of plastic but real fire, oppose each other in the night I am looking through. They are angled perfectly for me to see and be unable to discern whether they dwell in two windows of a cottage or in the hands of wanderers sisterly going their way along the hillside. 

Even when they remain in place I can’t be sure if when one dims slightly a fire is going out or one of the prospective figures has climbed up steps. If the steps are there, I cannot help but assume they are leading up to the brow of an ancient mound and perhaps to a temple there. This is how fairies worm into the world. They travel through the excess of a mind, from knowledge to projection, hill to square, and go unobserved until they are believed in. 

Suddenly I am imagining two girls climbing into a bed of grass, blue in blackness, as a coven of two. They have danced with fires a little in their time. But now is enough. They are already going down into the roots of birches by the moment I glance them. Their eyelids are overgrown in rich weeds. They are strange and apocalyptic although their sleep will certainly keep them safe. I relax my eyes and turn down to the screen. One light is left. Two have gone. It demands I read, and type, and contribute work. 

I have wasted a certain amount of my time and yet what was I doing before I did? Geese I am unable to see siren in the massive emptiness over my head. Umbrellas folded stand like hooded figures about the bank. Lights around me pulse like lighthouses at sea. I am working here. I am trying to work at five o’clock at night reviewing books, analysing Greek plays, in the middle of Winter. Perhaps I’ll order a drink. 

But before I stand I have the realisation that when I was dreaming, or whatever I was doing, the only lights that seemed around were the torches and screen. No lights, no lighthouses and no buzzing headlamps seemed to pulse behind me. I was caught up. Or rather, now, at my laptop, typing this, I have been caught. The beams in the distance were shimmers in the web that tightens presently as I struggle to leave. 

Is there any reason I am mesmerised more by my recollection than the event itself? Maybe this moment will also seem unimportant when it goes by and a more interesting thought supplants it. But that won’t alter the fact that, right now, I am aware of the felt significance of the present. It is no stretch at all for me to say that what I feel about this feeling, or remember about this particular memory, is instrumental like the fabric of the soul. 

That is perhaps the wrong word and yet it conjures up the transparent sheet that I am thinking about. The thing that lives in devices of consequence, and things with meanings, I know looks like that. A watery orb that sloshes with bubbles and bellies, and a topaz tone inflected with emerald. That is the being my looking back at my dream exposes it as. 

It is itself. It must be. It is the world and life, and because I myself am alive I cannot deny it, no matter if I later deny the form it appeared in. Even if I revoke the sludge, and do away with the lakemoss, and everything belonging to the black lagoon, it will linger like a ghost, the ghost of a ghost. It will be a fading image and an image. Polaroid, then vector. But each one on the same material before my eyes, conveying the same absolution independently. 

Yes, I will have a beer.

Puzzles Answers TT22 Week 5

Ifan Rogers
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Puzzles Answers TT22 Week 5

The answers to the week 5 edition of the Cherwell in TT22.

Two-Speed Crossword
Medium Sudoku
Hard Sudoku
Pencil Puzzle

Booksmart and the art of growing up

Dorothy Guy
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Booksmart and the art of growing up

There’s a moment when Molly and Amy (Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever), the independent, Ivy-League-bound protagonists of Olivia Wilde’s 2019 film Booksmart, give up and give in. Consequently, it’s the moment that I, sitting in a theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, my first year of university behind me, flew forward and thought the 2019 equivalent of ‘Is this fucking play about us?’. 

They’ve accidentally ingested drug-laced chocolate strawberries and begin to hallucinate themselves as dolls: their outfits are ridiculous, and their heads are heavier than their torsos – except of course for their chest which is twice as weighty as the rest of their shiny plastic bodies. The two girls, who have bumper stickers plastered with ‘Bernie 2016’, ‘Still a Nasty Woman’, and of course, ‘Bernie 2020’, catch a glimpse of their glamazonian features and are hooked. 

Amy, in the Mean Girls Halloween costume equivalent of Jessie’s outfit in Toy Story, philosophizes, ‘I know this is unrealistic and bad for women, but is it bad? Because I feel pretty good.’ It’s part of the movie’s quest to understand the struggle to become an adult today. We’re told to want it all, shown on social media that it’s possible, but commanded to stay relentlessly humble, even to hide our accomplishments. Amy and Molly and the rest of us live in the Duck Syndrome generation: as much as Amy proclaims to decry beauty standards, she can’t quite reject them. On the top, they float. They’re funny, brilliant, and having a good time, but the stress of perfection and the need to seem care-free and self assured is daunting. On their trip, they become living representations of the pain of looking at a photo of Emily Ratajkowski in a bikini on Instagram with the caption, ‘all bodies are beach bodies’. Sure they’re wonderful, but pretending that our insecurities are surmountable purely through the actions of the body positivity movement are ludicrous. 

Both girls are balls of nerves, and, Molly in particular, after learning that everyone is going to great colleges after high school – even after four years of seemingly lax behaviour, partying, and casual sex has a meltdown. To her ultimate horror, she learns that Annabelle ‘Triple-A’s social skills are matched only by her test taking abilities. Like Molly, she is off to Yale, and when they get there, she wants to pretend that the two don’t know each other. She learns that everyone she looks down on – slackers, heiresses, and athletes (including her Vice President, whose only role, she claims, is to plan parties) are off to incredible things. Molly spirals, the internal nosedive animated by the final bell and rave-like hallway antics of the beginning of summer vacation. If she isn’t better than everyone else academically, then what was the point of shipping herself off to social Siberia all those years ago?

When I sat down with my ludicrously large popcorn, I expected to settle down and view it with a newly earned jaded eye towards high school. There would be the ridiculous montage; the heroines would start by transforming themselves through sheer power of will but ultimately learn to accept themselves; the doll scene and Molly’s spiral of perfectionism reveal the movie to have a greater message about our culture and a much more realistic execution. By the end, their seemingly unconquerable love interests would be conquered (see the film’s spiritual ancestor, Superbad). 

To quote one of the most iconic scenes from HBO’s Euphoria, ‘Is this fucking play about us?’. I thought back to the nights I patted myself on the back for not going to the party, or when I went above and beyond on a presentation that simply didn’t matter, and at the end of it watched (happily, I feel the need to add) the girls who did both, who seemingly had it all, go to the same institutions I did. In contrast with movies I armed myself with throughout high school, Mean Girls (shown to us, incredibly, in middle school health class), Legally Blonde, and Clueless, Booksmart is about young women who have already succeeded but can’t quite shake their impostor syndrome. 

Gigi, the wild rich girl who would be the villain in another version of this movie, just wants everyone else to have a good time. She defends Amy – who she barely knows – by screaming, ‘You do not speak to her that way. That is my best friend in the world.’ She’s not quite ‘popular’ (we, arguably live in a post-Popularity world), but she’s the life of the party, and to Molly’s horror, she receives acceptance to her ‘fifth choice’, Harvard (though the role of nepotism in that decision is left ambiguous). Both she and ‘Triple-A’ are social and academic successes, but while Gigi is ultimately too relaxed to seem to have any actual insecurities, though that could be due to her immense wealth (a flaw in the film due to its lack of deeper investigation), Annabelle reveals that she hates her reputation, mostly because the other girls so easily believe it. It’s a familiar message of women supporting women, but the reality of the environment (even amongst the hallucinations and fact that no school in America has that many ivy league acceptances), is what makes Booksmart special. Here, no one is as miraculously peppy as Elle Woods, ridiculously vapid as Cher Horowitz, or as hilariously naïve as Cady Heron (or as evil as Regina George for that matter). Booksmart is not populated by caricatures. It’s about high school, and the worst part about high school is the realization that there is no movie montage, that nothing will miraculously and permanently transform you overnight. 

By the time the girls graduate, they’ve given up believing that their classmates hate them, but more importantly they find themselves together – still best friends, still ambitious and imperfect and stressed. They just have a few new great stories under their belt. The ceremony itself is no exception: an American high school graduation is an SNL skit, not an 80s movie. It’s punctuated with impressive mispronunciation and meandering speeches about going out into the world (even as the likelihood that we move back in with our parents increases), topped off with a few solo cups of whatever’s lying around (usually spiked seltzer). If you’re lucky, you might get a few days by a frigid lake with a dozen of the same people you’ve hung out with every weekend since the age of six. Ferris Bueller doesn’t take you on a road trip around Chicago to the Art Institute; no one gets the fake ID of one Mr. ‘McLovin’ (the goal of a fake is after all, inconspicuousness), and there’s no grand romantic music montage to an iconic 80s power ballad. When I graduated from high school in June 2018, my friends and I had a movie marathon and then showed up to a boring party for a couple of hours before walking barefoot in Central Park till dawn. It was memorable, romantic, even, but when the sun rose over the East River the next morning, I found myself unchanged. For Booksmart to be an effective movie, the girls have to go on an emotional journey paralleling their physical one across Los Angeles, but they don’t suddenly become complete, and, relatively speaking, they are who they were the week before. They’re just slightly more ready to go off into the world. Like Molly and Amy, I still had my friends, easy camaraderie with most of the kids in my year, ambitions, and something to do the next year. And like Molly and Amy, I realized that was enough.  

Image Credit: Eirien / CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

In conversation with Francesca Tacchi

Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson
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In conversation with Francesca Tacchi

Any book that begins with the sentence “Every day is a good day to kill Nazis” is bound to catch my interest. Luckily for me, that’s just how Francesca Tacchi’s Let the Mountains Be My Grave, begins.

Tacchi (xe/xem/xir) is a neurodiverse, queer Italian author, also contributing to Transmogrify! (June 2023), a YA anthology where trans people claim the central stage in fantasy stories. I’m Tacchi’s friend, and I have been anxiously waiting for the book’s release since day one. I was not disappointed when I finally got my hands – or should I say mouse and keyboard, since I read it electronically? – on xir novella. So this review is not entirely unbiased, but I will, of course, do my best to give a fair review.

Let the Mountains Be My Grave is an antifascist, queer novella set in 1944 Italy, just after the Allied forces landed in Sicily. The title is a reference to a verse from the well-known partisan song, ‘Bella Ciao’. It’s a semi-historical book, filled with good humour, touches of Etruscan mythology, and some fantastical magic. 

Tacchi said that xir inspirations behind the novella were mainly drawn from the fact that in WWII media the partisans are rarely represented.

“This war is a Hollywood darling, but most movies are focused on the Allied intervention,” continued Tacchi. “Very little space is given to local resistance movements, even when they were pivotal in defeating the Nazis, as in the case of Italy.” 

The main character is Veleno, a 20-year-old partisan with his heart set on vengeance because the Nazis ruthlessly killed his uncle and father. Hailing from the small Abruzzese town of Cocullo, Veleno is armed with an unusual weapon: the healing magic of the Chthonic, pre-Italic deity named Angitia. Cocullo celebrates St Dominic, patron saint of protection against snakes, in its yearly Festa dei Serpari (Festival of the Snake-Catchers).

Tacchi’s interests in history and ancient Italic paganism, along with xir history and tradition, were among their other inspirations. Tacchi masterfully balanced realistic and fantastical elements well. I also liked xir fictional interpretation of the war as including these ancient gods, but the fate of the war ultimately being in human hands. 

The novella is pleasingly fast-paced and includes a set of diverse, lovable characters: Mosca, a Catholic; Irma, a Jew; and last, but certainly not least, Rame, a communist. These names have specific meanings in Italian; this is because the partisans in the novella take on new names when joining the resistance.

“They were…united by the hate toward fascism and the desire to finally see Italy freed from Nazi occupation,” wrote Tacchi in xir author note. “I wanted to portray this diversity in the main characters of this novella.”

As an Italian-American Jew, I was especially happy to see the inclusion of the Jewish character, Irma, an academic. Irma has powers from a pre-Italic god, Tinia, who Irma describes as ‘the Etruscan Zeus’. I also appreciated the inclusion of the Italian version of ‘Echad Mi Yodea‘ (‘Who Knows One’), a traditional Pesach song. The lyrics demonstrate themes of freedom and resistance, which I thought pairs well with the novella’s own themes.

My Jewish brain also brought special attention to one bit of dialogue where Rame asks Irma how her relationship with Tinia goes with being Jewish. He assumes that Jews are forced into monotheism. She responds to Rame with grace. She explains that she personally believes in henotheism or monolatry, meaning that she believes in one god, but doesn’t deny the existence of other gods. She also explains that her standpoint isn’t one accepted by all Jews, a very important note for her to make. I think the author handled this tough topic best xe could by avoiding a generalisation of Jewish belief. Even between me and my two other Jewish friends, we disagreed on a general Jewish belief on Irma’s stance within the novel which goes to prove my point!

Aside from the Jewish representation, I also enjoyed Tacchi’s criticisms of American foreign policy across the globe. As was the author’s intention, Let the Mountains Be My Grave does not glorify the Allies’ involvement in liberating Italy from the Nazis.

Veleno feels that the Allies have no business being in Italy, and their assistance is likely rooted in self-interest rather than a genuine desire to help. He is concerned about the Americans potentially annexing the Italian peninsula: “What if they [the Americans] won’t leave, after the war is won? I’m not so sure I’d like to see Italy being liberated from the fascists just to step into the shadow of one of the Allies.” 

Although I’m half American, my Italian half catches Tacchi’s critique. After the war, the US began to station a large number of its forces throughout Europe. There are currently seven US bases in Italy, one of which is situated near my mother’s home town of Aviano.

On a very different note, the novel is unabashedly queer. “The choice of including queer people in my novella was quite simple, as I’m queer myself and always hungry for more representation [within the fantasy genre,]” said Tacchi. Xe also wanted to show that the most broken and messy of people deserve love. Xe hopes that queer readers will feel validated when reading this relationship.

While I enjoyed all of these aspects of the novella, I do have a few criticisms. My major one would be that some of the writing could be termed awkward. Although I enjoy belittling fascists any day, repeatedly calling Stormtroopers ‘Nazi pigs’ was a bit tiresome. There were also some strange descriptions, especially when it came to characters and people. I won’t be too critical about the issue of awkward writing because English is Tacchi’s second language, and xir writing really improves as you get further through the novella. 

These tendencies were balanced by some beautiful writing, however. There is some rather beautiful prose, not only about Veleno and Rame’s love for one another, but also about depression, memory, justice, and the general human condition.

Lastly, I enjoyed the importance of song and music throughout the novella, the lyrics of which are included in their original language. In xir author note, Tacchi said that xe wanted to do this because the songs are symbols which are deeply rooted in Italy’s cultural history. Xe felt that translating them in-text would have, in a sense, warped these songs.

“I really wanted to include songs and music first and foremost because songs are an important symbol of Italian resistance,” said Tacchi. “Songs are powerful in conveying a message, and also to more viscerally represent a people. Folk songs…are very common in Italy and traditional music plays such a big role in our culture.”

To conclude, I would strongly recommend reading Tacchi’s novella. I think the subject of Nazis, and fascism—and even more importantly, resistance to those ideologies—is becoming increasingly important with the resurgence of the far right across the globe. Furthermore, positive fictional queer relationships such as the one in Let the Mountains Be My Grave, are really needed because romantic relationships between men in fiction tend to end in tragedy. I genuinely look forward to Tacchi’s future releases, and I am excited to see how xe develops as a writer.

Image credit: Mia Carnevale (artwork), dave ring (cover design).

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