Wednesday, April 30, 2025
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Review: No Man’s Land – Frank Turner

Olly Featherstone
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Review: No Man’s Land – Frank Turner

Late June this year, Frank Turner announced his new album (No Man’s Land) – a collection of songs about the forgotten and overlooked women of history who have inspired him and his music. This conjured a sense of doubt in me as it seemed to be a very obvious attempt at a male singer-songwriter playing the hero and trying to reset the historical scales of gender imbalance alone. 

The singles that were released before the album dropped were, on their own, nothing out of the ordinary. The last of the singles to be released: The Hymn of Kassiani, was very much the cherry on top of a disappointing cake and left me completely disenfranchised with the album as a whole. This was until Friday morning, when Spotify threw the album in my face. As I have been a rather big fan of Frank Turner for the best part of 8 years now, I gave the full album a try, and couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised.

The album as a complete work feels far more like a labour of love than a political statement about gender inequality, giving him an opportunity to marry his love of history with the figures that influenced him. From a purely musical perspective, Turner draws from his various stylings during his solo career, from raw songs that seem very personal to him to full band bangers such as Sister Rosetta. The product of this amalgamation of styles and narratives is an album full of short stories about captivating characters where each song has an individual quality to it both in tone and in tale. 

As you listen through this album, the early worries about Turner playing a White-Knight subside almost immediately. The first song alone is about Camden’s legendary Jinny Bingham, the owner of a halfway house who was accused of being a witch after murdering several of her patrons who assaulted her. Not really the first person one would choose if you were purely out with the intention of playing the role of the saviour of womenkind. This being said, Turner does go on to sing about the lives of historical feminists whose stories have not been popularised or well-remembered. By singing from their perspective Turner runs the risk of coming across as mansplaining these powerful people’s lives, but when listening to the album it is plain to see that Turner is simply using the medium he knows best to communicate how inspirational their actions were.

A personal highlight from this album is the song “Rosemary Jane”, a song for his mother giving thanks to her for the difficult task she had of raising him and his sisters in spite of a father who was less than helpful. It feels like the follow on to a song he released as part of “Sleep is for the Week” in 2007: “Father’s Day”. “Father’s day” was a look in to the strained relationship with his father, which had a rather melancholy feel to it and little mention of the rest of his family life. “Rosemary Jane”, however, acts as the counterbalance to his earlier song casting a more positive light on to his home life whilst thanking his mother for it throughout. Turner has always been very open about the relationships he holds with both of his parents, often showcasing his mother during his live shows and getting her to play the odd harmonica solo. 

This album has proved to be an interesting journey away from Turner’s expected array of songs about his personal life and emotions, whilst maintaining the styles he has developed during his solo career. The result of this is a collection songs that you can find yourself lost in listening to for hours on end, enjoying the journey through time and musical styles he takes you on.

Success for Oxford University’s first postgraduate access programme

Rachel Cordery
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Success for Oxford University’s first postgraduate access programme

Oxford’s postgraduate UNIQ experience finished this week with positive reviews.

The graduate access programme launched this year, following the success of the recently expanded undergraduate equivalent.

UNIQ+ was launched with 33 students from 23 different universities across the country, after receiving almost 200 applicants.

The graduate summer school helps potential students to experience what life is like as a research student at Oxford, with a focus on medical, biological, mathematical and physical sciences.

With applicants from areas that have a low advancement rate into postgraduate study, the six-week long programme includes research training and events with guidance from current DPhil students and Oxford academic staff.

The programme includes a £2,500 stipend and free accommodation in one of 14 participating colleges.

Haniah, a UNIQ+ participant studying paediatrics, said: “The support and encouragement given to us by UNIQ+ staff to pursue higher education, not just at Oxford but anywhere in the world has been wonderful, and the options for our future are limitless.”

In a separate sphere, the Nuffield Undergraduate Scholars Institute (NUSI) is hosting a social sciences summer school for six undergraduates which offers training in social science methods and the opportunity to gain research experience.

With a view to gauge whether research suits them, participants in both initiatives gain a behind the scenes look into life as a postgraduate at Oxford.

Miles Young, the Warden of New College, said: “Access and widening participation is often seen as an undergraduate issue. But we believe it is just as much a graduate one. The same barrier exists: the false perception that ‘Oxford is not for me’.”

“We hope to dispel that, but also to give some very tangible insights and skills which will help any graduate to apply or to get the most out of a programme.”

Currently limited to scientific subjects, the University announced that planning is underway to expand UNIQ+ in 2020.

Disgust: When does shock equal art?

Cora MacGregor
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Disgust: When does shock equal art?

In his Critique of Judgement Kant alleges that the sensation of disgust alone produces a mental response so adverse to enjoyment, that the artistic representation of an object regarded as disgusting can never be a source of aesthetic pleasure or satisfaction. Yet art that repulses – whether morally, emotionally, or physically – is remarkably common.

While the latter two varieties are likely consistent across the history of the work’s reception, the former changes alongside the ethical and aesthetic sensibilities of a society. Millais’ Ophelia was initially condemned for the natural backdrop, painted with the same level of detail accorded to the piece’s eponymous but un-emphasised subject, a decision regarded by one critic as “perverse”; the depiction of Ophelia post-suicide was received with similar hostility because the representation of death by drowning involved the use of imagery typically associated with fallen women. The purity of the fictional, idealised heroine was tainted by this: it was alleged that Millais’ painting “robs … that maiden of all pathos and beauty.” Today Ophelia is the best-selling postcard of the Tate Britain, renowned worldwide as an image of a tragic, but poetically beautiful, death.

A more recent work of art, ostensibly of a different kind to Millais’ now undisputed masterpiece, but one which treats a comparable theme, and which has courted similar controversy on account of the shocking nature of its technique and effect, is Damien Hirst’s A Thousand Years. This piece has also been attacked on multiple grounds – for its lack of skill and excessive reliance on concept, and for its vulgarity. But one of the most interesting accusations levelled against Hirst involves his dependency on shock tactics. A Thousand Years consists of a decomposing cow’s head, slowly being devoured by maggots, which become flies, then die themselves. The process isn’t merely representative, but real. Even by Hirst’s standards, the spectacle is revolting.

Intellectually, Hirst’s artwork – his notoriously-repulsive shock-factor pieces, at least – does something fairly interesting, in terms of how they challenge pre-conceptions about the aesthetic function of art. He isn’t the first to have done this, of course, but the extreme he takes it to is unprecedented. And even if all A Thousand Years does is shock, its effect shook the artworld and its intellectual aftermath. Nonetheless, emotionally it is lacking. Hirst has claimed that the fear of death is the strongest feeling humans experience, the only idea there is, and what art is all about. But while a decomposing cow’s head must inspire a sense of disgust, even horror, it probably isn’t immediately evocative of fear. The work is almost indisputably about death, but not necessarily about the emotion we connect with it. I’m not convinced that the piece persuades the viewer to be frightened.

If, on a country walk, you had the misfortune to come across the carrion of a dead animal (probably not a cow’s head, since I’m not sure how regularly bovine decapitation occurs in the wild) surrounded by cloud of insect mourners buzzing a funeral dirge, your response would no doubt be similar that which A Thousand Years evoked when exhibited: shock, disgust – the process of decomposition may well even act as a memento mori, as Hirst seems to have intended his piece to be. The impact of putrid flesh on the observer is the same, regardless of whether we view it as art or not.

I think that’s one of the crucial differences between Hirst’s A Thousand Years and Duchamp’s Fountain, another piece which famously uses shock as a means of forcing upon its spectators an awareness of what exactly it means to look upon something as art. The response you have to a urinal in a gallery is entirely different to response you have when encounter one in a toilet (which, at its most extreme, is probably relief or maybe revulsion, depending on its state). The transposition of the urinal to an artistic context transforms the object; the transposition of the cow’s head to a vitrine with the addition of a pretentious title does not. The artist, in the context of A Thousand Years is making you look at something disgusting, at death, but besides that his role is essentially expendable: he isn’t changing the way you look at it. The physical repulsion you experience may be augmented by additional shock at seeing such an unorthodox spectacle within a gallery (although given Hirst’s reputation this is increasingly unlikely). But by playing off something already bound to produce a certain instinctive reaction, Hirst is cheapening the emotional impact and value art can have.

Mid-table mentality and the perennial notion of ‘Kicking On’

Joe Hyland Deeson
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Mid-table mentality and the perennial notion of ‘Kicking On’

Wolves won the league title last year in impressive style, taking the crown from Burnley who, in turn, took it from its more regular holders Everton. Of course, this is not the title, but this alternative league will be all too familiar for Premier League fans who follow teams outside the ‘Big Six’ who are traditionally so dominant. The last to break the hegemony of these clubs was Leicester in 2016, and it would be something of an understatement to describe that season as anomalous. Even with such an achievement in recent memory, it is impossible to conceive of the feat of winning the top division of English football immediately after promotion, last completed by Nottingham Forest in 1978.

So what must these other fourteen teams strive for? After Leicester’s goalless draw with Chelsea on the final day of 2018-19, manager Brendan Rodgers expressed the familiar sentiment that “hopefully we can go on and finish higher up the table next season”. This perennial concept of ‘kicking on’ is a staple of post-match interviews at the end of the season. Its foundation is the strong feeling that the season just finished was particularly unlucky for injuries and refereeing decisions, far more so than competitors, and that real progress can be made if a team can ‘start where they left off’ when August comes around again.

But this is an elusive ideal. Eight of the eleven teams who finished from 7th to 17th in 2019 also finished somewhere within these positions the previous two seasons and only West Ham, Watford and newly-promoted Wolves significantly improved on their positions from 2018. Momentum that is built up towards the end of a season seems to regularly come to nothing in August, while teams that are tailing off in April are just as likely to start the new season strongly.

For most clubs, other than Everton, whose supporters perhaps possess a stubborn superiority complex, there is that nervous section of fans who fear relegation as each season begins. Acutely aware that the lottery of each Premier League season can throw up surprising results, they are the antidote to those who seek to ‘kick on’. In 2016, for example, West Brom and Stoke finished secure in 10th and 13th. A year later, they were relegated in 19th and 20th with just thirteen wins between them.

One solution to this concern would be increased investment, but this is a hit and miss strategy at best. In the summer of 2018, Leicester and Everton spent a combined £193 million but were both unmoved in the table a year later, finding the mini-league impossible to break out of; whereas Watford spent just £24 million but rose three places to 11th and reached only the second FA Cup final in their history.

There is hope for smaller teams. In the summer of 2017, Burnley barely reinvested the money made from the sales of Michael Keane and Andre Gray, arguably their two best players, but finished nine places higher in May 2018 than a year earlier, gaining that coveted Europa League place. However, their success came from a series of narrow victories, with eleven out of their fourteen wins coming from a margin of one goal. It would still seem, therefore, that their success was unpredictable, and, apparently, unreliable, with the side only managing 15th place in the 2018-19 season.

The Sisyphean trials and tribulations of the Premier League’s mid-table sides, so often finding the climb into the top six an unassailable mountain, are a disheartening experience for supporters. These teams may be less eye-catching, but they are far more unpredictable, all wavering between the success of a Europa League place, and the chance of relegation. No-one has yet found the key to realising the aim of ‘kicking on’ and thus, for now, it must remain a mythical post-match soundbite.

Time to tilt the lens- part 2: which inclusive approaches make sense in fashion?

Sophie Grapentin
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Time to tilt the lens- part 2: which inclusive approaches make sense in fashion?

With Sinead Burke being the first little person to ever attend the Met Gala and Selma Blair walking the red carpet of this year’s Oscars with a walking stick made of black ebony and bedazzled with a pink diamond, 2019 has certainly had its moments of glamorous disability representation. But when it comes to incorporating disability in the world of fashion there is more than visibility to address: accessibility of shopping spaces or the actual products available are equally important.

Runways are just one of many spaces in which disabled people are not represented. Have you ever seen a mannequin with a disability? Or a disabled model in a mail-order catalogue, a fashion editorial or a product shoots? Samanta Bullock is determined to change this lack of representation and has not only ensured that the products of her own collection are showcased on a variety of wheelchair users. She is also promoting a prop in the shape of a wheelchair: By being put on this stylised wheelchair seat every store mannequin turns into a wheelchair user. This so called “mannequal” was invented by Sophie Morgan. Disabled women from all over the world have also taken matters into their own hands. They show off their outfits under #babeswithmobilityaids on their social media profiles creating the visibility themselves that the fashion world has denied them so far.

Yet representation is not necessarily the biggest concern for every woman. Don’t get me wrong: representation is important! But when you can’t even enter the store because your wheelchair gets tangled up in T-shirts and dresses, the fact, that your body type is represented somewhere in there, seems less of an achievement.

Overall it appears that there is a discrepancy between the wishes and needs of everyday women and the women who are currently representing people with disabilities in the fashion industry. The first just want to get dressed in a way that works for them and then focus their attention on the things that really matter to them like their jobs, hobbies or families while the second are die-hard fashionistas unrelated to their disability. Sinead Burke’s work with luxury designer brands like Gucci is an exciting step towards social justice in fashion. Samanta Bullock’s vision of wheelchair models on every runway of every fashion show is awe-inspiring. Yet one can’t help but wonder if that is the approach that will give a wide range of disabled women the access to the fashion industry that would create the most equality for the most people. Samanta has compared the visibility of disability to that of black models who starting from a few luxury brands have now become part of mainstream fashion campaigns at all different price points. However, there are a few crucial differences between marginalised parts of the population like black people and ignored groups like women (and for that matter men) with disabilities. While people living with physical disabilities are not a minority per se, the great number of different abilities and needs means that they do not constitute a coherent group from the perspective of clothing.

It is easy to understand Sinead’s desire to be able to own and wear a beautiful beaming yellow silk designer gown. However, if you are not working for Vogue and hanging out at the Met Gala the events in your life that ask for a silk gown are probably few and rare. In addition to the sheer lack of occasions comes the corporeal factor. Anne pointed out how the structured, even stiff materials of high fashion looks are not just restricting but actively uncomfortable against a body that might have had several operations or suffers from chronic pain. After living with a wheelchair every day for the great majority (or all) of their lives, it is difficult to imagine how one’s personal clothing style might be different without the disability. Jo contemplated about her personal style for a while and concluded that she doesn’t know whether her choices of stretchy cotton shirts and skirts is due to her disability or simply because she loves it.

While disabled women like Anne or Jo have a clear understanding of the connections between affordable prices and the need of companies to keep their overhead costs low and therefor do not expect that all brands will ever cater to their specific disability, they also see the advantages of ‘cheap fashion’. Its materials often work very well for customers living with disabilities. The stretchy and soft cotton jersey of an H&M dress is a great fabric choice. It makes the garment easy to pull on and off without any assistance, it feels soft against the skin and can accommodate a great variety of movements without being restrictive. It is also inexpensive. The disability pay gap is a very real issue and it means that luxury fashion is not a real concern for most people with disabilities. Disability rights UK estimates a disability pay gap of 15 percent for the year 2018. In numbers that means that the average disabled worker earns £2,730 less per year than the average non-disabled worker. Just think how many dresses that could buy!

One thing that crystallised itself very quickly was the complete lack of interest in so-called ‘disability brands’. The comments on them were critical and ranged from mentioning their ugly designs to the lack of connections they have to the lives of the disabled women who might buy from them. As Anne puts it, there are only so many wheelchair friendly raincoats one might need, or want. Samanta also emphasised over and over again that she did not create a brand for wheelchair users but designs clothing that is comfortable to wear in a seated position.

More information about the products already on the market would make shopping more accessible. One issue for example is the length of skirts and trousers. What is looking like a chic work-appropriate pencil skirt on the model that is standing, slips up when you wear it while sitting and shows more leg than you ever planned or wanted. One easy solution would be companies providing measurements of skirts and trousers from waist to hem in the descriptions of products on their websites. If the models sit down for one picture when presenting the garment, customers in wheelchair would already get a much better idea of how said skirt would look on them. And I’m sure, after a long day of photo shooting the model would appreciate a chance to put their feet up as well!

Music on the Big Screen

Georgia Watkins
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Music on the Big Screen

Music in film is worth more than we realise. The sound of Yann Tiersen’s minimalist piano piece ‘Comptine d’un autre été, l’après-midi’, for instance, is just another reason why we count romantic comedy Amélie as a smash hit. The lulling chord progression sparks us to also appreciate the cinematographic bliss of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s France – the colourful train station, the retro lustre of the Café des Deux Moulins, and the striking rouge of Amélie’s bedroom. When we laze around on an off day clutching a cushion and watching Bridget Jones tipsily dance alone in her flat to Jamie O’Neal’s cover of ‘All by Myself’, we realise that without a memorable score, there wouldn’t be iconic moments that merit an obsessive desire to replay (especially the moment where she furiously kicks the air during the key change for the final chorus – fun fact: Renée Zellweger actually ad-libbed that entire wallow-dance scene, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since). Yet, the reasons as to why many people, myself included, fascinatedly leaf through the soundtracks of films (some of which the listening precedes the watching itself) in our spare time extend beyond the visual-aural link.

A good soundtrack not only brings emotion to life, but also fantastic writing and acting. I’d quite like to hold a magnifying glass to the soundtrack of Gone Girl(2014) put together by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The pulsating synth bass and ominous Wurlitzer melody of ‘Technically, Missing’ mingles so well with Rosamund Pike’s raspy, a-bitch-boutta-get-hit narration of Gillian Flynn’s ‘Cool Girl’ concept; so much so that without it, the ‘Cool Girl’monologue would not be such a thematic climax to the film for me. The confrontational heartbeat of the music that gains instrumental layers as the song progresses resembles Amy Dunne’s peaking journey, slathering the cross-cut sequence in suspense. Besides this, Reznor also explains to Rolling Stone that scoring Gone Girlwas a test of emotion and skill. He described creating the soundtrack as an attempt to ‘try and get into his [David Fincher, director] head and translate what he’s saying or feeling into an approach’. Therefore, the music must be in parallel with the overall mise-en-scène of the film; it is a team effort between the director and the musical directors to understand each other and create something unanimously agreed upon. 

Another film score to shed light on is the score of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) which brilliantly converts the Elizabethan Verona into the present day. The climactic choir of ‘O Verona’ by Craig Armstrong accompanies the spectacular opening montage of the film before being followed by ‘The Montague Boys’, a cocky, cruising instrumental piece with rattling drums and rapped lyrics from Justin Warfield of One Inch Punch. A particular shortcoming of this piece of score is that this leitmotif is, simply, just a leitmotif; with various critics professing disappointment of not being able to enjoy ‘The Montague Boys’ as a full song. Despite this, however, the juxtaposition of this laid-back piece with the seriousness of ‘O Verona’ does a fantastic job in hinting at the evil in the playful streets of Verona and makes death and the eventual dual suicide the central theme of the movie.

Thinking about it all, a soundtrack, like the piece of artwork it is, has to be mesmerising on all levels. It has to be recognisable – something you can go back to and listen to over and over again even after the film has ended. For me, cinematic music is the most magical genre of music, as it is designed to reflect and coincide with visuals and provoke emotion calculated by authors and directors – and it doesn’t even have to follow the basic pop model of verse-chorus-verse-chorus for people of our time to be hooked onto it.

“Lil Thot”: How female empowerment and music intersect

Megan Whitlock
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“Lil Thot”: How female empowerment and music intersect

One of the first lessons we are taught as children is that to gain respect, we must first earn it. Yet for women in music, the question of how to earn respect in an industry that is still overwhelmingly dominated by men still lingers. It is undeniable that icons such as Beyoncé and Ariana Grande have conquered the charts with game changing girl-power anthems. Yet studies such as the USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative show that between 2012-2018, only 21.7% of Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart songs were created by women artists, with even fewer women taking up producer roles. These findings, combined with the release of controversial hits such as Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines,’ suggest that women are still being represented in music through a primarily male lens: a focalisation that often isn’t concerned with being respectful.

In 2016, Kanye released the now-infamous ‘Famous,’ which gained notoriety for containing his boasts “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex // Why? I made that bitch famous.” The fallout feud between the Kardashians and Taylor Swift may have left fans divided, however perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the drama was the impact it had on Swift’s own branding. Her entire ‘Reputation’ era – from the album and music videos to the concert staging and costumes – built itself around the image of the ‘snake,’ an insult which Kardashian had branded Swift in what she referred to as an “online hate campaign.” By referencing the snake in the room (so to speak), Swift not only reclaimed the insult, but transformed it into a massively profitable brand for her music. Sure enough, ‘Reputation’ became the US’s best-selling album in 2017.

Reclamation as a form of empowerment isn’t a new concept, but it does have deeply significant implications for women within the music industry. One such example is Cardi B, who rocketed from stripping to becoming one of the most acclaimed rappers in the business (and indeed dethroning Swift’s place on the Billboard chart). Her mastery of a genre that has been repeatedly critiqued for its misogyny and objectification of women rests in part on her reclamation of the same misogynistic labels used against her, particularly in relation to her stripping past. From the outset, songs such as ‘Trick’ and ‘Lil Thot’ on her debut 2016 mixtape established dominance not only over her past clientele, but on the ‘thot’ label hurled against her, setting the trend for her music and proving herself to be just as valid a competitor as her overwhelmingly male peers. In challenging male lyrics that, as she has said herself, “let us know that they use us,” Cardi B rises to their level by returning fire on their violence and objectification.

But there is a debate to be had about the effectiveness of engaging with such misogyny. Whilst it is undeniable that Cardi B has succeeded in levelling her genre’s playing field, at what point does the reclamation of sexist and violent slurs cease to be empowering, and instead normalise the use of derogatory language? To be respected as both a rapper and a woman, she must prove herself to be capable of beating her male rivals at their own game by using their own lyrical style against them. Yet surely this denies her the ability to simply rap within her own right, independent of her past and her competitors. To what lengths must one artist go to empower themselves before this goal defines their entire career? Whilst reclamation certainly has been a crucial part of her personal success and empowerment, the extent to which it can be branded a success for the feminist movement as a whole is far more ambiguous. The ‘feminist’ label is one that Cardi B has hesitated in assigning herself in past interviews, a narrative that social media has exacerbated further in exposing her past posts online evidencing transphobia. Whilst reclamation can be powerful, it also can also create a gateway to a far more slippery slope of normalisation, which in turn certain groups can use as justification for using such language maliciously. When listening to music, it can become very easy to simply blindly sing along to lyrics without truly considering what they mean and what they stand for: where one person may find them empowering, another may find them incredibly offensive.

But regardless of your personal views on the implications of reclamation or an individual artist’s controversies, the impact of a woman conquering a male dominated field, topping charts, and continuing to do so even throughout a pregnancy is undeniably liberating. What the likes of Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift and even controversial stars such as Cardi B stand for is the simple fact that women should not have to earn respect within the music industry because of their gender, but that they should earn it on their merits as an artist. And that is pretty empowering.

Cybersecurity risk posed to incoming students

Luke Dunne
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Cybersecurity risk posed to incoming students

A recent report by cybersecurity firm Proofpoint has revealed that the vast majority of the UK’s universities, including Oxford, have failed to take recommended precautionary steps to protect students from crime online, and this particularly threatens new students around results day. 

Only one in twenty of the universities surveyed was using the recommended level of DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) protection, with 30% using some form of the tool below the recommended level and the rest using no DMARC protection at all. 

The increased threat posed by hackers has led the government to act in recent years, most notably forming the National Cyber Security Centre in 2016. 

However, Proofpoint’s report suggests that the same could not be said of many universities.

Kevin Epstein, vice-president of threat operations, said: ”By not implementing simple, yet effective email authentication best practices, Universities may be unknowingly exposing themselves and their students to cybercriminals on the hunt for personal data.

“Proofpoint researchers found that the education sector saw the largest year-over-year increase in email fraud attacks of any industry in 2018, soaring 192 percent to 40 attacks per organisation on average.

“Institutions and organisations in all sectors should look to deploy authentication protocols, such as DMARC to shore up their email fraud defences. 

“Cybercriminals are always going to leverage key events to drive targeted attacks using social engineering techniques such as impersonation and universities are no exception to this. 

“Ahead of A-Level results day, student applicants must be vigilant in checking the validity of all emails, especially on a day when guards are down, and attentions are focused on their future.”

A response from the National Cyber Security Centre emphasised how closely it was working with universities and other public bodies. A spokesperson for the Centre said, “NCSC experts work closely with the academic sector to improve their security practices and help protect education establishments from cyber threats”.

Plan to save Lawrence of Arabia’s Oxford home

Rachel Cordery
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Plan to save Lawrence of Arabia’s Oxford home

BBC world affairs editor John Simpson and Rory Stewart, Secretary of State for International Development, have put forward a plan to save the childhood home of TE Lawrence.

Remembered as an army officer, archaeologist, and war hero, Lawrence’s life was immortalised in the Academy-award winning film Lawrence of Arabia.

Yet, aside from the blue plaque on the wall, 2 Polstead Road blends into the many red brick houses in north Oxford.

Falling into disrepair, the house was put on the market last year for £2.9 million but remains unsold.

Recently, the TE Lawrence Society appealed against the governmental decision not to give the house listed status, emphasising the urgent need for its protection.

Simpson and Stewart, who has made a two-part documentary for the BBC on Lawrence and his legacy, have suggested the creation of a centre for Lawrence studies.

A permanent memorial to Lawrence, they propose that the house should be bought and returned to its original condition. They believe the best buyer to be one of the three Oxford colleges Lawrence belonged to: Jesus, All Souls, and Magdalen.

Simpson and Stewart wrote: “We feel the house should be opened to the public and hope that some of the interesting and remarkable objects and documents held by a number of institutions could be put on display.”

“We think that a Lawrence Fellow should be appointed to act as custodian and organise lectures and exhibitions,” they added.

TE Lawrence, famed for his role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, lived in the house from 1896.

First attending the City of Oxford High School in George Street, now the university’s history faculty, Lawrence went on to read history at Jesus College.

Before the war, Lawrence embarked on a three-month walking tour of crusader castles in Ottoman Syria, before learning Arabic in Byblos.

On his return from his archaeological adventures in 1914, the family agreed to convert the outhouse in the garden into a timber bungalow designed by Lawrence himself, that survives to this day.

Simpson and Stewart wrote: “This outhouse, like the main house, is still much as Lawrence left it, although the sheeting has long gone. The building bears his stamp; he was keen on the Arts and Crafts movement, and it shows.”

“We feel that the property as a whole is far too important to be left to fall apart, or to be taken over by a developer and lose its character for ever.”

“We invite anyone who is interested in TE Lawrence, and in the house that made him what he was, to join us in our big to turn it into a museum and study centre that will do justice to one of Britain’s most fascinating and influential heroes.”

Leonardo da Vinci: a Mind in Motion

Ramani Chandramohan
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Leonardo da Vinci: a Mind in Motion

There’s not a Mona Lisa in sight. In fact, there’s a grand total of one painting in the whole exhibition…err, are you sure you’ve got the right da Vinci?

Welcome to the British Library’s new exhibition, which will certainly put your mind in motion, as its title suggests, thanks to its atypical depiction of the genius we think we know.

To celebrate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, as macabre as that sounds, the British Library has collated a stunning selection from three of da Vinci’s notebooks – on display together for the very first time. In addition to the Codex Arundel from the library itself and the Codex Forster from the Victoria and Albert Museum, visitors can see pages from the Codex Leicester – on loan from Bill Gates who bought it for over $30m in 1994. 

         The focus of this exhibition is not on da Vinci the artist, but the scientist. This side of the polymath is rarely so fully explored as here, with the notebooks revealing his ideas, experiments and discoveries in areas such as mechanics, geometry, astronomy, architecture and hydraulics. The black, grey and turquoise theme of the exhibition space is a change from the ubiquitous white gallery walls da Vinci’s work normally adorn. Seeing the contrast between the pale cream of the pages from the artist’s notebooks and this dark background gives the collection an eerie sense of mystery, which is compounded by any attempts to decipher the artist’s famous back to front, or ‘mirror’, writing.

           Though relatively small, the exhibition room allows visitors a close view of each carefully chosen page: amongst the rows of painstakingly neat sentences, diagrams spiral out of corners and disturb the discipline of the body of text. These are no hasty scribbles but rather, da Vinci’s masterpieces in miniature: from representations of an underwater breathing apparatus to the flow of the Arno River in Italy. Da Vinci’s notebooks are works of art in themselves, a testimony in this digital age to the power of writing and drawing by hand. At times, though, you do have to roll your eyes in exasperation at the feeling that there was seemingly nothing, not even doodling, that da Vinci, like a universal teacher’s pet, did not excel at.

         The interactive features of the exhibition provide us with access to digitalised copies of da Vinci’s notebooks, as well as transcriptions and translations of his works, which serve to demystify da Vinci’s illegible script. Thanks to the succinct explanatory panels, even the most clueless of visitors – myself very much included – can gain an understanding of why da Vinci’s works were, and still are, important to the scientific community. For instance, the exhibition highlights da Vinci’s disputation of established Aristotelian ideas about the difference between the ‘celestial’ and ‘terrestrial’ parts of the universe and observations about how the Moon, rather than emitting its own light, reflects that of the Sun. 

         Nevertheless, this exhibition does hold something for those accustomed to da Vinci’s traditional oeuvre by emphasising how he applied his scientific ideas to his artworks and linked motion in the natural world to his pioneering depictions of the human body in motion. The final item in the exhibition is a copy of the first version of the Virgin of the Rocks, known by art critics for the unified composition of its religious figures and its innovative abandonment of halos. However, after showing visitors da Vinci’s sketches on the motion of water, the exhibition encourages us to adopt da Vinci’s multidisciplinary viewpoint and compare his sketches of flowing waves to the flowing locks of the Madonna’s hair.

Whether you come to this exhibition from the arts or the sciences, it is hard not to admire da Vinci’s crossover of these two, supposedly diametrically opposed disciplines. Whatever answers the exhibition provides to questions about his contributions to science and engineering, we are inevitably left with a sense of the incomprehensible genius of da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion is on at British Library until September 8th.

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