Thursday 17th July 2025
Blog Page 852

There’s more to prehistory than cave drawings and diplodocuses

Katie Sayer
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There’s more to prehistory than cave drawings and diplodocuses

I’m sure I’m not the only person whose experience of history in school was the two World Wars, and a cheeky splash of the Tudor Court thrown in for good measure. For the lucky ones among us, the American War of Independence might have gotten a quick look in. But in any case, we certainly never looked back further than the Battle of Hastings in 1066. ‘Prehistory’, that period before we started regularly recording things, has had an even worse ride. I would love to say that I compensated for this dearth by ardently researching the huge swathe of pre-Roman history in my spare time, but I have to be honest – my perception of civilisation’s emergence is pretty much the dinosaurs dying out and being replaced by the Roman Empire with next to nothing in between, and I’m fairly certain that I’m not alone in this gaping chasm of ignorance. Fortunately, a solution is present. Either, cut yourself off from the rest of humanity and spend a few years of your life meticulously researching anthropology and ethnography until you’ve filled the gaps in your knowledge. Or, read Sapiens. The choice is yours.

“A brief history of humankind” is the flippant subtitle of Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari’s ground breaking best seller, and yet Sapiens achieves everything it sets out to in this self-aware description, detailing more than 7,000 years of human history in just under 500 pages. Harari approaches this feat by considering in turn each of the major revolutions in the history of humanity and considering their consequences for the development of our species. If you immediately thought of the Industrial Revolution as well, fear not – you are not the only one experiencing horrific flashbacks to GCSE, but rest assured, Harari’s approach is simple and informative without ever being patronising, a significant achievement for a book that has to simplify some incredibly complex anthropological ideas for a wide-ranging lay audience.

Harari’s first stop is the cognitive revolution, so called because it saw the birth of the homo sapien as a species that thought, imagined and told stories in a way that other species simply did not. 100,000 years ago there were at least six human species inhabiting the earth contemporaneously, known as the ‘early hominids’. The prototypical evolutionary diagram in the back of a biology class does not account for the fact that these different types of human lived alongside each other rather than growing into one single species. Harari argues that what established the Homo Sapien as the dominant force was its capacity for fiction. From unitive narratives like religion to social narratives that functioned as gossip, he suggests that our capacity to interact, tell stories and socialise is what enabled us to thrive as a species, and that everything, in essence, is a story – from the thought that going on holiday abroad is a luxury, to the thought that human rights should exist.

From the cognitive revolution, Harari goes on to look at the agricultural revolution and the scientific revolution, working all the way up until the present day. From the emphasis he places on the plight of domesticated animals, it may be unsurprising that Harari is a vegan, and his consideration of factory farming as “perhaps the worst crime in history” will certainly provide food for thought (if you’ll pardon the pun).

His exploration of capitalism is also erudite and thought provoking, and his consistent use of topical metaphors and images (comparing, for example, the reimagining of wine as the blood of Christ in Christian ceremonies to the invention of Peugeot) are engaging and useful.

With celebrity fans including Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, it is a credit to Harari that Sapiens has been translated into more than 30 languages worldwide since its original release in Hebrew in 2011, and was a Sunday Times Number One Bestseller. With the sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, having just been released, there is no book I can recommend more highly to provoke thought, make you reassess your perception of human supremacy, and most importantly, teach you that there’s more to prehistory than cave drawings and some diplodocuses.

New Sainsbury’s set to open on St Aldates

Mia Millman
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New Sainsbury’s set to open on St Aldates

Christ Church students will be able to access their new “state-of-the-art” accommodation block on Queen’s Street at the start of next term – located above a new Sainsbury’s Local store, which is set to open this month.

The new accommodation building, developed by Reef Estates, will include 133 ensuite rooms, kitchens, and common rooms, along with a cinema room and gym in the basement. The rooms will be above several new shops, including the Sainsbury’s Local with its storefront on St Aldates. Though the majority of the rooms will be used by Christ Church, a portion of the accommodation – 54 rooms – may be let to other colleges.

Work on the site began last year, following two years of discussions regarding the building’s design. The architecture had input from Oxford Civic Society and conservation officers at the city council.

“It’s a state-of-the-art building for students with nice kitchens and common rooms, and a cinema room in the basement,” said Jacob Russell, head of design at Reef Estates.

“Some of rooms have fantastic views over the skyline and Christ Church students will be right in the centre of the city, but not too far away from the college.”

Speaking about the project, Labour city councillor Colin Cook said: “It will be an asset to Queen Street and a good location for students to move into for the new term.”

Work at the site is expected to finish on 21 August, with Sainsbury’s opening by the end of the month. The accommodation will be ready for students to move in at the beginning of Michaelmas.

The work’s completion comes in the midst of significant changes to the city centre, with the opening of the new Westgate shopping centre due on 24 October.

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour review – ‘Fizzing with energy and bravado’

Izzy Smith
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Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour review – ‘Fizzing with energy and bravado’

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is a cacophonous coming of age story, complete with fireworks, smoke machines and audaciously funny one liners, but it is the six main characters themselves that truly make the performance.

It is incredibly refreshing to see female characters who are raucous, rude and badly behaved, while simultaneously human and layered. Slut shaming and stereotypes would have us believe that being sex-obsessed, drunk and disorderly precludes tenderness and complexity, but Our Ladies shows these impulses authentically and inextricably combined in the urgency of youth. We see drunken honesty provoke self discovery, shopping inspire intimate moments of friendship, and sex pursued in order to live life to the full.

The girls are fizzing with energy and bravado, bursting into song and embodying myriad other characters as they recount their hectic 24 hours in Edinburgh. But they are also each dealing individually with complex and often difficult life experiences, from illness to sexuality, from poverty to pregnancy to grief. The quieter moments of the play, where characters talk through their experiences, often to one other girl, or directly to the audience, are by far the most moving and memorable, often adding explanation and depth to their more rowdy behaviour.

What can be disturbing is how the play’s happy-go-lucky attitude takes amorality a little too far, with very dubious sexual consent played off as comedy on more than one occasion. At one point, a dangerously stoned girl “takes one for the team”, having sex with an adult man as payment for drugs. In moments like this, the play’s pleasing scorn for the excessive moralising the girls face, from nuns at school, parents and society at large, seems to become something darker, where the outrageous must be accepted as fun, however damaging something may be in reality.

Ultimately, the play addresses the importance (and limits) of one great night of freedom. It is a joyful experience to see these girls so unfettered, juxtaposed with the rigid expectations of their strict Catholic school. That fact that this night of debauchery is enabled by a school trip to a choir competition is tickling in itself, as is the contrast between their initial angelic choral singing and the foul-mouthed chaos that subsequently ensues. It is also moving as we come to understand the importance of this night for each individual character: what they, sometimes naively, hope will come from it, or what the night unexpectedly helps them understand about themselves. Bold, jocular Fionulah’s frank introspection (Dawn Sievewright) and gradual self acceptance is particularly beautiful to watch.

In Orla’s case (Isis Hainsworth), her illness makes a tragedy of the common realisation that culturally-loaded experiences like having sex for the first time are not necessarily life-changing. She doesn’t have time for her life to change slowly, as significant experiences come randomly and unpursued. Though less desperately, the other girls act on a similar impulse: the rarity and specialness of this day of complete freedom, in the midst of lives restricted by circumstance, means that it must be enjoyed and risked and lived to the full.

Our Ladies is essentially the story of six teenagers on an all-day piss up, but the significance of that to these particular characters, at this moment in their lives, cannot be ignored.

‘Road’ review – ‘A formidable fusion of poetry, movement and humour’

Lucy Miles
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‘Road’ review – ‘A formidable fusion of poetry, movement and humour’

Road begins with the crescendo of Judy Garland’s enduring song of hope and desperation: “birds fly over the rainbow, why then oh why can’t I.” This sense of escapism and desire for a better life predominates throughout Jim Cartwright’s gritty yet lyrical portrait of economic hardship.

Set in Lancashire at the height of Thatcher’s Britain, Road gives us an insight into the lives of the residents of an undefined road over the course of one night. It debuted at the Royal Court in 1986 to great acclaim. Bringing it back now to austerity Britain is an unusual move for a theatre that celebrates new writing and rarely revives plays. But it works. If you look beyond the shoulder pads, elaborate hairstyles and 80s hits, the depth of disenchantment resonates today. In fact director John Tiffany (of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child fame) cites this stagnancy as a key driver for the revival “It was written from a place where it didn’t feel like it could get any worse…and actually it’s got worse for people.”

But for all the frank despair – “fucking long life in’it” is a common refrain – the lyricism of the writing and the pervasive music conflate to affirm a latent sense of hope and striving for better – not accepting that this is ‘it’. In one particularly potent moment, the drunken narrator Scullery (Lemn Sissay) takes a shopping trolley as his dancing partner to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Although the 80s dance routines between scenes sometimes lacked crescendo, music is used skillfully throughout the play, bringing a sense of denouement at the end of the piece. A cringingly awkward drunken double-date was revolutionized by the playing of the entirety of Otis Redding’s ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ as though this was all that was needed to lessen the burden of trying times.

Chloe Lamford’s design adds to this sense of isolation in the characters’ lives – they are delivered up through the floor to tell their story in a grungy glass box; a display-case prison acting as an echo chamber for their thoughts. Sometimes moments of overly chummy audience interaction detract from this voyeuristic feeling. The original production’s promenade format would have lent itself better to this attempt at interactive theatre but as it stands I would have preferred that the seclusion be maintained.

Faye Marsay and Shane Zaza are convincing and arresting as Joey and Clare – a couple on a suicidal hunger strike, portraying the innate human desire for more than “work, work, small wages, Death”. They emphatically admonish our trepidation in confronting this: being “frightened to sniff the wind for fear it’ll blow your brain upside down.” The detail of Mark Hadfield’s performance is captivating in his portrayal of a lonely man evoking his earlier life when there “were so many jobs”. Game of Thrones’ fans will be unsurprised by Michelle Fairley’s incredible abilities, showcased best through her tragic portrait of Brenda, the withered alcoholic scrounging for a pound from her daughter and the poignantly hilarious Helen seducing a paralytic soldier who proceeds to unceremoniously vomit into a plate of chips.

Road is an outstanding fusion of excellent poetry, movement and humour which, together, offer a portrait of life beset by escapism and economic difficulty. If the transitions between vignettes seem clunky at times this can be primarily put down to their juxtaposition with the depth of emotion conveyed as each individual character tells their story. It is a formidable play which sharply portrays the struggles of ordinary people as accurately now as it did when it was first written. I can only hope that its bleak relevance diminishes over time.

Road, Royal Court, London, until 19 September.

‘STOP’ at the Fringe review – “it deserves an award for excellence in storytelling”

James Tibbles
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‘STOP’ at the Fringe review – “it deserves an award for excellence in storytelling”

According to Andrew Lloyd Webber, musical theatre is losing its momentum in the UK, but STOP could just be about to buck that trend. The recently-graduated duo of Annabel Mutale Reed (book and lyrics) and Leo Munby (music) has found an impressive sweet spot by writing a concept musical that deals with one of the most pressing and universal issues of our time: a crisis of mental illness.

Waiting together at a magical bus stop, a lawyer, personal trainer, dancer, and student are forced to stop and face their internal battles. Their circumstantial relationships tease out each unique story through a series of monologues and musical numbers that are sensitively performed by an ensemble of just four actors. The unashamedly British wit of the script lures audiences into a false comfort which is then thwarted by a powerfully emotional final quarter.

Although sometimes lacking in sustained physical characterisation, all the actors give competent individual performances, as well as pulling together for exquisitely harmonised group numbers. Martha, a black lawyer played by Mutale Reed, is perhaps the most complex character of all. Her struggle to come to terms with her husband’s depression, her pregnancy, her alcoholism, and everyday racism culminates in a truly heart-wrenching performance of You Matter Today. The song verges on breaking the fourth wall by offering a message of hope and encouragement, however the show’s direction and writing evades over-egging the sentiment by maintaining an entirely naturalistic portrayal of a mother empowering her child. Poignant moments like this are plentiful in every character.

Credit must also go to Gemma Lowcock, the only non-original cast member, who stepped into the role of Chloe with marked ease. In the new version, Lowcock not only conveys Chloe’s bipolar type two more clearly and sensitively, but exploits Munby and Reed’s intelligent structure. Chloe, with her colour-coded revision cards, glues the hard-hitting stories together through endearing friendliness and unassuming humour, all while exhibiting the versatility of Munby’s incredible, infectious score.

Advice, however, from an out-of-date composer whose ego could fill all 1,200 pages of Les Miserables should be consumed with caution; Claude-Michel Schönberg, with whom the show has been workshopped, has done the show few favours since January. If this was a plot-driven, lengthy epic I could understand why Munby would use a recitative “inspired by the theatrical language of Les Mis and Miss Saigon”, but the additional underscore in the first half and the recitative were ill-fitted to the subtlety of the script, and became tiresome by the end. In what is also quite static staging, the underscore distracts from the compelling story-telling of the script. I can’t help feeling the show could be even better if Munby and Reed stuck to their original instincts and trusted their remarkable talent.

The production also needs ironing out, with unnatural direction of movement and incomplete sound design (a soundscape, for example, would really enhance the setting), but this was likely down to unfamiliarity with the space. The simplicity should nonetheless be commended. A minimalist set and production assures that the characters and their stories remain at the forefront. And that is really where this production excels; STOP is a show that creates conversation and reinstates stories as the currency of human exchange. “Excellence isn’t a duty”, but boy, STOP deserves an award for excellence in story-telling.

 

STOP, Venue 58, until 28 August.

New College bursar slams Louise Richardson’s “grossly excessive” pay

Fred Dimbleby
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New College bursar slams Louise Richardson’s “grossly excessive” pay

The New College bursar has launched an attack on the “grossly excessive” pay of Oxford’s Vice Chancellor, Louise Richardson, and that of the University’s senior management team.

In a letter to the Financial Times, David Palfreyman stated that it was difficult to find “value for money in return” for the increasing pay of Oxford’s senior academics, when it had entailed little “improvement in governance”.

Palfreyman levelled much of his criticism against the salary of the Vice Chancellor (VC), Louise Richardson, who is paid a salary of £350,000 per year, rising to £410,000 if pensions are included.

Palfreyman, who has been he New bursar since 1988, stated that Oxford’s VC had once been the “cheapest…in the land” until about 2000.

David Palfreyman, New College bursar (Image: New College)

He dismissed comparisons between the wages of university VCs and those working in banking as “silly”.

“No sane person could dispute that top bankers are egregiously overpaid, but their daft pay is no reason for VCs to be put on the same gravy train, albeit in a third-class compartment,” the bursar wrote.

Figures released in January showed Louise Richardson was the third highest-paid VC in the UK, and that on average, the VCs of Russell Group universities took home six per cent more than they did two years ago.

It was also revealed in March that Oxford had the highest number of staff earning over £100,000 per year.

A spokesperson for the University said: “Oxford is the world’s highest-ranked university” and that “the remuneration of the vice-chancellor reflects this.”

Has football finally sold its soul to money?

Jack Allsopp
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Has football finally sold its soul to money?

For the £198 million that Paris Saint-Germain parted with to meet Neymar’s release clause, you could purchase thirteen Alan Shearers, over a trillion Freddos or one-tenth of a British parliamentary majority. £198 million is also the cost of covering the entire city of Barcelona in spaghetti. For Neymar to be worth his weight in a commodity, gold would not do; instead he would have to be made out of plutonium, which costs $4,000 per gram.

But the face value price is not the whole story: when agent fees, the contract’s value and other expenses are considered, the cost of this 25-year-old footballer’s transfer from Barcelona is closer to half a billion pounds sterling. This leads anyone to question whether the beautiful game has finally gone mad, whether this sort of spending is sustainable, and how any human being in any profession could be worth such an eye-wateringly gigantic sum of money.

But in the context of this summer transfer window, Neymar is worth it. Romelu Lukaku, a Chelsea reject who has had two fruitful seasons at Everton, is valued at £75 million by Manchester United. Goalkeepers Jordan Pickford and Ederson have been snapped up this summer for fees equal to or in excess of £30 million; both have never represented their countries at a senior level. Is Neymar two-and-a-half times as good as Lukaku, or seven times as good as Pickford or Ederson? Undoubtedly.

The reputable CIES football observatory rates Neymar as the most valuable footballer on the planet: they have his market cost at €210.7 million, which is almost the same as Neymar’s release clause (€222 million). He is an incredibly prolific goal scorer and supremely skilful footballer with pace, creativity and intelligence. In his short career he has already won La Liga twice, the Champions League once, and established himself as the best Brazilian footballer on the planet (no mean feat, if history is anything to go by). He is also a commercial godsend for the club, with his easy media style, virtuoso performances on the pitch and well-known name meaning that he is practically a brand; he will generate revenue for PSG as soon as he arrives in France.

Yet all this talk of numbers makes one question whether football has become simply a data-driven sport. Today, footballers are judged by their coaches, ex-footballers on the television and the armchair pundits at home by how many metres they run during 90 minutes, how many chances they create, the number of interceptions they make, and so forth. The transfer window itself has become a tournament, presided over by the effervescent Jim White and capturing as much interest as any ordinary Premier League weekend. Ordinary fans are priced out of the game, where a season ticket at the Emirates Stadium costs around £1000, and where you cannot watch Champions League football for free. In the last few years, the big wigs of the sport, Sepp Blatter and all his cronies, have been rumbled for corruption on a frankly disgusting level.

It’s starkly clear that there is too much money in football. It has become, whether us fans like it or not, a multi-trillion pound business, a market with a life of its own, where a pre-game pint and pie costs more than a match-day ticket should be sold at. It is no longer the working man’s game. This is what Neymar represents, and whilst he might be worth it when you run the numbers, the soul of football was sold long before Neymar traded the best club in the world for a Parisian upstart outfit to line his wallet and soothe his ego.

Fringe 2017: ‘Radio’ review – “yet another gleaming success for Sunscreen Productions”

Christian Bell
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Fringe 2017: ‘Radio’ review – “yet another gleaming success for Sunscreen Productions”

What did you do last night? Six students sit in their kitchen after a boozy house dinner on their last day of university and piece together what they can remember from the night before. Their hazy memories allow them to recall some events, but no one can remember why exactly the police are imminently due to arrive, or who called them. As the play progresses, the radio in the background becomes more and more prominent, manipulating the characters’ discussions almost to the point where it seems to be contributing to events. Friendships and romances become more and more strained in lieu of this uncertainty, and the rising tension culminates in the discovery of an incident from the night before… and the police knocking at the door.

Archie Thomson’s debut play is wickedly funny, punctured with engaging dialogue and witty comments throughout. He light-heartedly explores many of the insecurities and fears that all students face at the end of university, ranging from relationship dilemmas to career uncertainty, and the huge variety of paths available for young people to go down is reflected in the range of different characters. Thomson is critical of all his characters – be that Tom, with his economics degree, or Sam, who has spent the last 3 years working in a pub. At the end of the play you are left with the nostalgic feeling that the only thing holding the group together was university itself.

The characters are all based on exaggerated student archetypes that are immediately recognisable to anyone who has ever shared a house. Steph is the hilariously socially awkward software engineer, Paul is the laid-back Mancunian, and Bee is the left-wing feminist to name just three. It’s clear the cast worked together closely to develop these characters as each one has a flair of originality that is often missing from other plays: Steph’s mannerisms, Tom’s arrogance, and Paul’s charm all heighten the interactions of the group, and prevent the archetypes becoming hackneyed. The viewer is left with a great sense of familiarity with each of the characters, despite the performance lasting under an hour.

Radio proves to be yet another gleaming success for Sunscreen Productions who have consistently put on critically acclaimed performances over the last couple of years. After selling out the Chelsea Theatre, I am excited to see how the next few performances at Paradise Studios go, and am looking forward to seeing what they will produce next.

Radio, Paradise in Augustine (venue 152), 9.05pm, until 19th August (except 13th).

Life Divided: Summer Clothing

Aidan Balfe and Rachel Craig-McFeely
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Life Divided: Summer Clothing

For: Aidan Balfe

The introduction of summer in 1873 paved the way for a number of innovations in Victorian Britain. Like all things that make Britain great (or just okay, depending on your standpoint) summer was stolen from the colonies. Beforehand, life on this tiny island was simple and predictable, but chaos and panic kicked in during the first ‘British summer’, with temperatures in some parts of England reaching the soaring heights of 26 or even 27 degrees.

It was a battle between those of a traditional conservative sensibility, and new revolutionary thinkers who believed that women should have the right to expose their ankles in public. The randy bastards. A parliamentary debate on mandatory seaside regulations that required bathers to don no fewer than seven layers of clothing ended with the Liberal MP for Dewsbury pleading to his Conservative rivals: “Come on chaps, it’s fucking boiling. I’m sweating my bollocks off in here, let alone on the beach.”

As public morality began to give way to considerations of comfort, summer clothing began to emerge as one of the most important developments in British society since the invention of the letter ‘p’. Originally designed as trousers for very short people – hence the name – shorts were a truly revolutionary breakthrough.

It’s easy to sit here today, in your one-piece swimsuit, or Adidas sliders, and forget the brave men and women who went before us – the pioneers of summer clothing – and the sacrifices they made. It’s because of them that a man like me can wear white linen trousers. Or why any one of us can saunter into Tesco wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a leopard print tank top, pick up a 16-pack of Bière d’Or, and sit around in a park eating watermelon and turning pink.

Some may see this as a poor reflection on British society – as somehow not in fact the greatest achievement of all of modernity and civilisation itself. Maybe they think that people flash too much skin these days, or that we have no public modesty or respect for one another. But what I would say to those people is this: how long has it been since they last went to the beach, took off their shoes, took off their shirt, took off their shorts, and took off their underwear. Probably never, right? No-one’s about to start walking around stark naked anytime soon. It’s a separate question of whether that would be a bad thing, but I suppose I’ll save that for another Life Divided. The point here is that summer clothes are to be enjoyed and appreciated.

Against: Rachel Craig-McFeely

Scrolling through #summerclothing on Instagram, it is easy to be lulled into a fantasy of a summer spent strolling, perfectly tanned, through sun-drenched streets in shorts, sandals, and sunglasses. Yet these dreams are quickly shattered by a glance out of my rain-spattered window. Summer clothes may be the perfect attire for those who happen to live in Greece, yet sadly splitting my time between Oxford and rural Wiltshire doesn’t exactly provide many sunbathing opportunities. No matter how glorious the sunshine seems in the morning, grey clouds and rain invariably reappear, and too soon any hopes of a tan are crushed as, goose-pimpled and shivering, I search desperately for a warm jumper. Call me melodramatic, but summer clothes in England are about as useful as my English degree is for a future career.

Of course, there are those rare days when the sun does deign to shine – or, far more likely, you go on holiday. However, the scarcity of such occasions hardly justifies splashing out on a whole new summer wardrobe, particularly as shops appear to operate on the rule that the smaller the piece of fabric, the higher the price. It may be just me, but paying £20 for a top scarcely larger than a flannel is almost as painful an experience as the sunburn its lack of coverage will result in.

In fact, the main component in my summer wardrobe is sun cream, which I wear liberally as a greasy, wasp-attracting second skin over the areas that my summer clothes fail to cover – that is, 90% of my body. The ease apparently offered by summer clothing is somewhat undermined by the hours needed to apply and reapply sun cream throughout the day – an arduous two-man job which skincancer.org recommends undertaking every couple of hours. Caught in the paradox between wanting a tan and the fear of skin cancer, a day on the beach descends from carefree relaxation into anxiety, in which the words “you look a bit red” are enough to strike mortal panic into any heart.

And don’t get me started on sweat. Heat combined with thin, light-coloured clothing leads to less than glamorous sweat patches, which only severe editing can hide from holiday snaps. Even the solution of wearing a light, loose dress quickly becomes a problem in itself as any breeze is a constant threat of indecent exposure – think less sexy Marilyn Monroe and more desperate clutching at handfuls of fabric.

Yet although the abandonment of summer clothing is highly tempting, any form of clothing is more appealing than walking to Summertown in sub:fusc during a heatwave (one of my personal highlights of Prelims). With this in mind, I will grin and bear the sun cream and sweat for the sake of my social life – but roll on autumn, when it is once more socially acceptable to live in jeans and a jumper. I can’t wait.

Somerville urges employee to turn himself in over stabbing murder

Cherwell News
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Somerville urges employee to turn himself in over stabbing murder

Somerville College have urged their employee accused of stabbing to death a hairstylist in Chicago to turn himself in to US authorities as police in Chicago said they were “closing in” on him and a US academic.

Police in the city said they “have an idea” of the whereabouts of Andrew Warren, a senior treasurer assistant at Oxford’s Somerville College and Wyndham Lathem, a professor at Northwestern University. The pair are accused of stabbing to death a 26-year-old-man, Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, in Lathem’s Chicago apartment.

Oxford University said it would help police with their investigation as Somerville College urged Warren to turn himself in.

“Andrew Warren’s colleagues at Somerville College have now all been informed and are shocked to learn of the case,” a college spokesperson said.

“Whatever the circumstances, we would urge him to contact the US authorities as soon as possible, in the best interests of everyone concerned.”

Officers in Chicago said their hunt for the Warren, 56, and Lathem, 42, a microbiology professor, was “intensifying”.

“We do have an idea of their whereabouts and efforts to locate them are only intensifying from here on in,” a spokesperson said.

“Our primary focus is to facilitate a safe surrender and we strongly encourage Professor Lathem and Mr Warren to do the right thing.”

Officers found the victim with multiple stab wounds in Lathem’s 10th floor apartment on 27 July. The attack was so violent that the blade of the knife believed to have been used to stab Cornell-Duranleau had broken, Chicago police said.

US police warned members of the public that the because of the violent nature of their alleged crime, the pair were believed to be “armed and dangerous”.

Warren, 56, oversaw pensions and payrolls at Somerville. According to police and media reports, he is believed to have flown to the US days before the murder took place, after allegedly meeting Lathem online.

Court files give Warren’s address as Somerville but his Facebook profile says he lives in Swindon, Wiltshire and is a former cashier and Stagecoach bus driver.

In an email sent to Somerville staff and students on Tuesday morning, the college Principal, Alice Prochaska said: “Neither the College nor the university were aware of the case, which is clearly extremely worrying. We and the university authorities will liaise with the investigating authorities and provide any assistance that is required.

“This comes as upsetting news to all of us. Counselling support can be made available to anyone who needs it.”

In a statement on Thursday, Oxford University said it had been in contact with police in the UK about Warren and was “ready to help the US investigating authorities in any way they need”.

His alleged accomplice, Wyndham Lathem, had worked as a scientist at Northwestern University since 2007, specialising in the bubonic plague.

Northwestern said Lathem had been placed on leave and was banned from entering the campus.

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