Monday 25th August 2025
Blog Page 1633

‘Being offensive is not an offence’

0

I’m pretty easily offended. Honestly, I’m very thin-skinned. I’ve had people hurl obscenities at me when they drove past me down the road. Quite upsetting at the time. Somebody once undermined my wittily insightful point in YouTube comments. Ouch. Just recently, I was directed towards a blog called lookatmyfuckingredtrousers, in which a particular sartorial choice is roundly mocked. I’d just recently purchased a rather dashing pair of burgundy chords, so of course my immediate reaction was one of dismay and annoyance. I, like anyone, get annoyed and upset when something offends me. But that’s just part of life. As Stephen Fry once said, ‘Being offensive is not an offence.’ Except, increasingly, it is.

Recently, there have been a number of cases where people have been prosecuted under various legislatures for offending others. For example, Barry Thew was sentenced to four months for wearing a t-shirt that seemed to celebrate the death of police officers; another man was arrested for asking a police officer if he knew his horse was gay. Another man was charged for playing Christian dvds in his Christian cafe. Most importantly, though, in October Matthew Woods was sentenced for six months in prison for posting offensive messages on his facebook page about the April Jones case. I can’t say what they were; as is usual with these sort of cases the public never get to see for themselves what language is deemed so offensive (though that’s an argument for another time), but they were cruel and uncalled for. And what Woods did is illegal, under section 127 of the 2003 Communications act, which states that it is a crime to send  ‘by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character’. 

What’s more disturbing is the justification for his custodial sentence, given as ‘The reason for the sentence is the seriousness of the offence, the public outrage that has been caused.’ In other words, because of the large amount of people he is considered to have offended, his crime is worse. So what about all the people who weren’t bothered?

On a basic level, offense is hugely subjective.  Offensiveness varies between cultures; in the middle ages, taboo language largely revolved around desecrations of religion and sickness (a plague on both your houses! Is a far more offensive line than we might allow for; in modern terms it’s more applicable with ‘I hope you all die of AIDs’); even today, what is considered offensive differs from country to country. Even between individuals, it is hugely variable. For somebody who’s recently lost a relative to cancer, any frank talk on that matter could be seen as offensive. Equally, someone making a joke about, say, Middlesborough could hugely insult anyone from that area through generalisation. Some wags in the media have taken this to its extreme in suggesting that they found Justice Hudson’s decision in the Woods case hugely offensive, and are demanding his arrest.

Even ignoring personal subjectivity, many things can be seen as offensive; criticism, for example, no matter how well-intentioned and constructive can be quite hurtful. Equally, any kind of disagreement can be offensive: who can honestly say they haven’t been piqued by some arrogant politico dismissing their ideology with the wave of a hand? This applies to religion, too – recently ( in a case that was later thrown out of court due to the high levels of publicity), a student was arrested under section 5 of the public disorder act for labelling Scientology a ‘cult’ on a protest. The reasoning is that somebody could have been offended by the sign; well yes, presumably they could. They don’t believe their religion is a cult, and based on that they almost certainly would be offended.

So what?

There are laws in place to deal with significant, threatening behaviour, discrimination or incitement. But should it really be a legal matter if our feelings are hurt? If you’re upset by something, don’t form a mob and rush someone’s house (as happened to Matthew Woods); just accept that whoever it was is unpleasant and move on. Nobody is claiming that what Woods or many others have said was inoffensive, but life is full of unpleasantness. People are being charged for the kind of things that, if heard in conversation, might lead to an argument, or just a passive-aggressive sidle away. We don’t need these disproportionate attempts at social engineering, because they won’t work; people will always be unkind, and we will always have upsetting things said about us. Trying to stop people having their feelings hurt by sending people to prison does nothing but set dangerous precedents for free speech.

I know that these cases aren’t black and white censorship issues, and I know it’s not as if people’s right to air grievances is being infringed upon. But if we start imprisoning people for saying things we don’t like, we set legal precedents that are the first step on a long progression to a world where we’re no longer able to express ourselves freely for fear of arrest. It may seem melodramatic, but I don’t want to live in a society where people aren’t free to insult me. Life is upsetting, but that shouldn’t give us a right to censor the cruel. Democracy requires more voices, not less.

Demo2012: Protest for the sake of protest?

0

#Demo2012 is scheduled for the 21st of November, and will see thousands of students descend on the capital to have their voices heard. The problem with the protest is that their voices do not seem to be putting forward a coherent message in any sense. This protest does not seem to be fighting any particular issue merely offering an opportunity for disgruntled students to vent. For this reason it is hard to criticise any of their goals, as no one really knows what they are beyond the 3 banner headlines ‘Education, Employment and Empowerment’ which spans such a huge section of social policy it all seems a little diffused and ineffectual. The last event on this scale in the UK was a direct reaction to events in parliament; the tuition fee rise, which let us not forget, is two years old now. This protest does not seem to have a stimulus, mandate or reason, beyond protest for the sake of protest. This is not a defence of the Coalitions policy but a critique of the direction this protest is taking and how it is counterproductive.

Firstly if the protest does not know what it wants, with a set of clear demands then how can any parliament be expected to listen and respond. A comparison could be made between this and the Occupy movement, which did not seem to have any particular demands beyond having their opinions and obvious dissatisfaction heard. The difference being that the Occupy movement scapegoated the bankers and their greed, something which the public can easily latch onto. Whereas student protests run the very serious risk of demonising themselves; last time students marched, the news stories surrounded the outbreaks of violence across the city of London, and all the work of those who protested peacefully was tarnished with a highly negative brush.

Are there not better uses of resources that will help to achieve some of the aims that students are so concerned by? Will the funding of outreach programmes better help pressured students, rather than a protest which will have no benefit to the movement’s cause (used in its most nebulous sense).

Student bodies were of huge importance to issues such as the civil rights movements, groups such as SNCC were influential in pioneering the sit-ins and other critical events. What was key was that they were built around a core set of ideals with an ultimate goal, in that instance racial equality. The fact that student unions are supporting this motion as whole bodies seems somewhat ludicrous as these bodies represent huge bands of people, many of whom accept the fee rises and do not feel victimised. In the same way that the students who protest, are not all violent, students cannot be grouped by our unions into this bracket that we are all being unfairly persecuted, as not all students feel this way. It is not the beliefs that are the issue, it is the method for getting them heard.

Council awarded living wage certification

0

Oxford City Council has been accredited with becoming the first authority in the county to ensure that its employees are paid the ‘living wage’ of at least £8 an hour. The announcement comes ahead of the national Living Wage Week, which will take place across the UK between November 4 and 10. Oxford City Council implemented the scheme in 2009. Recently, the council has had to make other budget cuts in order to raise its lowest level of pay from £7.20 to £8.01 an hour, which is 81p above the UK Living wage for outside of London. The current minimum wage across the country is £6.19 for those over 21.

Leader of the council, Bob Price, said, “We’re pleased our initiative has been formally recognised and the positive effects this policy has had on supporting the city’s economy.” He explained the motivations behind the living wage, commenting, “We were aware that the national minimum wage could not reflect the much higher housing costs in Oxford and other major urban centres. We wanted to ensure that our minimum pay rates, and those of our contractors, took account of this major difference in what a low salary can provide as a standard of living.’

“The impact on our employees has been very positive and the quality of our staff reflects the terms and conditions offered,” he added. “We would certainly like to see all employers adopt a Living Wage Minimum that reflects the reality of local living costs especially in the Thames Valley area,” he concluded.

Rhys Moore, director of the Living Wage Foundation, told the Oxford Mail, “The benefits to staff and business are clear. I welcome the leadership shown by Oxford City Council on this.” At the time of the council’s decision to adopt the living wage Oxfordshire Chamber of Commerce president Nigel Wild said he applauded Oxford City Council for taking the measure. He commented, “But I think businesses are having to cut their cloth accordingly at the moment and if they haven’t got the money, they can’t raise wages. Most people are taking the view that simply having a job is better than no job.”

The living wage is a voluntary rate of pay that some employers give their staff and is designed to enable workers to afford a basic standard of living. It is calculated by a formula from the National Income Standard, which is authorised by the Rowntree Trust, and takes into account factors such as cost of housing, council tax and transport. Oxford City Council is the only one of Oxfordshire’s six local authorities to have gained accreditation.

Tom Coy, Exeter Welfare Officer, welcomed the announcement: “it’s great that the council has recognized how expensive it can be to live in Oxford and has raised the wage it pays to its employees accordingly.” Barney Grimpson, a second year Economics and Management student commented, “It’s a shame that the university has not followed suit. It is scandalous that the second biggest employer in the city has not committed to paying its staff a wage which reflects their costs of living.”

The Oxford Living Wage Campaign aims to build an alliance of workers and students to campaining for a living wage for all employees of Oxford University. The campaign highlights that working poverty is a growing problem in the UK. 61% of children living in poverty live in working households. 18 out of 38 Oxford colleges are confirmed as currently paying their staff the living wage.

Last week, Joshua Calder-Travis, representing the Oxford Living Wage Campaign, criticised recuitment adverts published in The Oxford Student, which stated “Because of my story, scouts across the university are now paid a Living Wage”. Calder-Travis claimed that 16 colleges did not pay Living Wage to all employees, with a further four failing to respond. Information on contractor wages was difficult to obtain. He said ‘Through discussions with employees, and information gathered in other ways, we have come to believe that the majority of staff employed in this way are not paid a Living Wage.’

‘People who are employed to clean libraries and departments often finish work before students arrive. As such there is little chance that students will ever have met the person that cleans their department. It is these staff which the Oxford Student’s claim that ‘scouts across the university are paid a Living Wage’ overlooks, along with all the staff at a further sixteen to twenty colleges.’ He therefore suggested ‘the statement published in the Oxford Student paper is both highly misleading and deeply harmful to building a community in Oxford where everyone is paid fairly.’

Isaac Delestre, Editor of the Oxford Student, refuted these allegations, saying that the quote itself had not actually said that all scouts in the university were paid a living wage. He added that the paper had helped, for example, to ensure staff at St John’s were paid a living wage.

Oxbridge applications rise

0

Record numbers of students are applying to the most competitive courses and universities according to figures from UCAS. Courses at Oxbridge and medical courses have seen the largest increase in applicants; almost 57,000 applied to Oxford or Cambridge or to the dentistry, medicine, or veterinary science courses before the 15 October deadline.

This is a 2% increase over applications for the same courses at the same time last year. There was a drop in applications last year. However, figures show that this trend is likely to change as students target degree subjects and universities leading to well-paid careers, and expect better value for money in return for increased fees.

Dr Julia Paolitto, speaking for the University, said, “over the last couple of years applications to Oxford have held steady at just over 17,000 – prior to that we saw a significant increase in the number of applicants. Importantly, while applications for 2012 entry went down significantly across the sector, Oxford saw virtually no decline in applications, and has held steady again this year.”

Dr Paolitto continued, “Application figures suggest that potential applicants have recognised that Oxford offers a fantastic, world-class education and is incredibly affordable as well.”

Scottish applications, despite large subsidies, were down by 1%. Applications from Wales dropped by 3.9%, and those from Northern Ireland increased of 2%.

Demand from European students, who pay the same fees as British students, was up by 1.8% while applications from students outside the EU also rose by 5.1% despite having to pay considerably higher fees.

‘The New Snow Trip’ opens to all

0

A new Oxford University ski trip is hoping to attract students this year. ‘The New Snow Trip’ was originally only open to New College, before extending to Magdalen in 2011 and St Hilda’s in 2012. Now the trip is open to all Oxford University students.The trip will take place on the 15th-23rd March 2013 in Val D’Isere.

The base price for the trip is £359, which includes 6 days accommodation, a lift pass, travel and several extras. Trip organisers managed to get a low price because of New College’s relationship with the tour operator ‘Off the Piste’, which they have used for the last 3 years. Events such as a Toboggan Evening and BBQ, a Race Day, a fancy dress day, and an event at Folie Douce are planned.

Organisers are promoting the trip as a smaller, more friendly trip than Varsity, with a good social vibe, better weather, better snow, and better skiing at Easter. They also promote it on the grounds of its lack of Cambridge students. Last year the trip’s mcuh smaller capacity of 96 people was reached, but it is hoped that this year many more people will take part.

Chiara Quadranti, the President of The New Snow Trip, said, “Not all colleges have their own ski trip so this gives a chance for anyone to go skiing, if they missed out on Varsity or if Varsity is not for them.

“We want to provide students with a fresh alternative. While Varsity is huge, quasi-corporate and intimidating (to some) we want to propose another option: something a bit different, more likeable, more personal.

“We want to set up something that could appeal to the same audience, i.e. the whole of Oxford, but with a very different vibe.”

Harry Browne, a St Hilda’s student who went on the trip two years ago, said, “The atmosphere is different from Varsity because it’s smaller and you know everyone. But it’s still lash on the mountains.”

Matthew Kain, from New College, went last year, said, “Better snow, no dirty Tabs, same lash – should appeal for people who actually want to go skiing rather than watching some crap like Ms Dynamite.”

Midori Takenaka, a rep from Corpus Christi, told Cherwell, “The New Snow Trip is definitely not trying to compete with Varsity. The organising team are all students, and so the trip has been designed in a very student-friendly way. We are confident that the trip will prove to be a success, as it has been in previous years.” 

Last year the Varsity trip sold out within 8 hours, and 3,200 students attended. However, this year tickets did not sell out.

Varsity President Simon Bushell told Cherwell, “The Varsity Trip is run on a not-for-profit basis entirely by student volunteers who aim to put on the best week possible for the participants of Varsity Trip, and we always strive to improve on last year’s trip. With six years of trips of over 1000 people, and over 90 years since the first Varsity Trip, we certainly have a lot of history to build on.

‘As with the much improved booking system, we are working hard to respond to all of the feedback we had from last year’s trip, and this experience is one of the advantages of going on Varsity Trip.

“One of the reasons Varsity Trip is so enjoyable is that it combines an intimate skiing experience with friends, with most participants sharing rooms or corridors with people from the same college, while giving an amazing opportunity to meet new people!”

Regent’s students alarmed by intruder

0

A man broke in to the third floor of Regent’s Park College on the night of Tuesday 30th October, and stayed outside for several hours.

The man, believed to be homeless, took a ladder from the building works on Pusey Street, dragged it to St Giles, and then climbed up the scaffolding to the third floor of the college’s Wheeler building. 

The alarms were set off, at which point he began to behave loudly and aggressively. A window was broken and the inhabitants of the  flat were evacuated, spending the night sleeping on the Junior Dean’s floor.

The intruder is thought to have been intending to commit theft. It is unclear how the window was smashed.

Ben Deaner, a third year studying PPE at Regent’s told Cherwell, ‘He was talking about homelessness problems in Oxford. He said that he’d been on the streets for 15 years. He was antagonising the police and shouting and swearing down at them, calling one of them a liar and going on about how he knew who they all were. He kept saying it was going to be a long night and asked when the Oxford Mail was coming. He was up there for about four hours.’

A Wheeler resident said, ‘College dealt well with the crisis, immediately evacuating the flat where he broke a window and generally keeping an eye on the situation and the people involved. They had done everything they could to make sure the scaffolding was alarmed.’

The reaction on Facebook was less calm. One student who lives in the flat wrote, “You’d think you’d be safe from casual breaking and entering what with being on the THIRD FLOOR. Apparently this is a flawed assumption.”

JCR President Jack Watson commented, “The matter is now in the process of being investigated by the police. Statements were taken from those affected.’

Regent’s Park College has made no official response to the intrusion. The college bursar declined to comment.

Housing campaign gathers pace

0
Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) 
has stepped up efforts to get all letting 
agents in Oxford to delay the release of 
their student properties until February.
OUSU President David Townsend informed student bodies that the coalition of parties involved in its early lease 
campaign, which includes all JCRs and 
MCRs, Oxford University Colleges and 
Oxford Brookes University, as well as several City councillors, have agreed not to 
publicise any early release dates put forward by agents.
Oxford East MP Andrew Smith also 
“fully supported” the campaign, and 
“urged” agents to come on board. “I 
would welcome a classification system 
on service quality and accommodation 
standards,” he told Cherwell.
Townsend was involved in ongoing 
talks with agents this week as November 
release dates loom. He declared, “The 
strength of our joint campaign relies on 
all of us working together to refuse to 
advertise ‘early release’ letting agents.”
At least 14 undergraduate colleges 
and nearly all graduate colleges expect 
a proportion of students to live out at 
some stage during their course, meaning that freshers are often compelled to 
sign contracts for the following October 
in Michaelmas of first year.
Many are unfamiliar with prospective housemates, the city of Oxford itself, the housing market, and the details 
of budgeting and tenancy rights and obligations. Wrong decisions and fallingsout can lead to uneasy living situations: 
one third year at Mansfield recalls how 
his religious housemates “spent a year 
trying to convert me.”
After a 1500-strong petition last year, 
the early lease campaign launched to 
give students a “decent amount of time” 
to decide where to live and with whom. A 
second year at Exeter recounted, “Housing rumours spread in third week. People threw together groups in mad panic 
and started signing in fifth week.”
One St Hilda’s second year was caught 
“completely by surprise” by early release 
panic. She found a place to live only 
when one group needed a room filled 
at short notice. “I’m very lucky,” she remarked, “But agreeing to live with people I didn’t know well was a daunting 
process.”
Oxford City Council already operates 
a Landlord Accreditation Scheme, which 
OUSU hopes to use with its own Ethical 
Letting Guidelines to produce a graded 
‘traffic light system’ for students.
Agents who agree to withhold properties until the new year are marked as 
‘green’, ‘yellow’ agents have agreed to 

Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) has stepped up efforts to get all letting agents in Oxford to delay the release of their student properties until February.

OUSU President David Townsend informed student bodies that the coalition of parties involved in its early lease campaign, which includes all JCRs and MCRs, Oxford University Colleges and Oxford Brookes University, as well as several City councillors, have agreed not to publicise any early release dates put forward by agents.

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith also “fully supported” the campaign, and “urged” agents to come on board. “I would welcome a classification system on service quality and accommodation standards,” he told Cherwell.

Townsend was involved in ongoing talks with agents this week as November release dates loom. He declared, “The strength of our joint campaign relies on all of us working together to refuse to advertise ‘early release’ letting agents.”

At least 14 undergraduate colleges and nearly all graduate colleges expect a proportion of students to live out at some stage during their course, meaning that freshers are often compelled to sign contracts for the following October in Michaelmas of first year.

Many are unfamiliar with prospective housemates, the city of Oxford itself, the housing market, and the details of budgeting and tenancy rights and obligations. Wrong decisions and fallingsout can lead to uneasy living situations: one third year at Mansfield recalls how his religious housemates “spent a year trying to convert me.”

After a 1500-strong petition last year, the early lease campaign launched to give students a “decent amount of time” to decide where to live and with whom. A second year at Exeter recounted, “Housing rumours spread in third week. People threw together groups in mad panic and started signing in fifth week.”

One St Hilda’s second year was caught “completely by surprise” by early release panic. She found a place to live only when one group needed a room filled at short notice. “I’m very lucky,” she remarked, “But agreeing to live with people I didn’t know well was a daunting process.”

Oxford City Council already operates a Landlord Accreditation Scheme, which OUSU hopes to use with its own Ethical Letting Guidelines to produce a graded ‘traffic light system’ for students.

Agents who agree to withhold properties until the new year are marked as ‘green’, ‘yellow’ agents have agreed to delay releasing a set number of properties, and ‘red’ agents are non-cooperative. Agents listed as ‘red’ will be advertised through JCRs and MCRs. Wadham Student Union President Jahnavi Emmanuel commented, ‘Not all agents have signed up, so for the scheme to work we need all students fully behind this to make sure no one starts looking for houses until February.’

Spire Properties, one of the letting agents already on board, agreed that “whether agencies suffer by not joining the scheme will depend on whether students delay their property searches.”

Premier Letting, one of Oxford’s ‘Big Five’ agents, remains undecided. It “would love” to release properties later, but stressed, “We are a business and offer a service to both tenants and landlords.” It pointed out that it was less risky for agents with smaller student housing stock to sign up to the scheme.

Premier told Cherwell that the main constraint on later release was “landlord pressure”. They explained, “Some agents already released their lists in mid-October, and some landlords multi-list their properties with several agents.

Many landlords like to secure bookings for the next year on their property by Christmas, which they will do with an agent not signed up to the scheme.”

Spire’s director Craig Carter however reminded that, “It is easy to forget that when we first started nearly 25 years ago, student lists were produced around Easter time.

“Release dates were gradually brought forward. I remember joking with clients that one day lists would be produced before Christmas, never thinking this would actually come true.”

A third year at Regent’s described the consequences. “People waited from 4.30am in freezing November cold to book viewings or see houses on offer. Letting agents could not cope with the mass of students who arrived on the day the lists came out.

“I wish it had been more clear that there was no big rush. Most houses aren’t let until much later in the year. I simply wasn’t aware of that fact and was sucked in by agents’ unfair tactics.”

An Exeter second year said, “Agents gave us an ultimatum to put down an admin fee. We felt pressured into signing, but found out later that they’d said exactly the same thing to others.”

Townsend claimed such fears of student accommodation “shortages” in Oxford are “a myth”. He explained, “It’s the students’ market. Every year colleges build new student rooms, meaning that private market supply shifts in their favour.”

Emmanuel added, “Obviously we can’t prevent anyone from looking for accommodation when they want to. But we encourage students not to sign tenancy agreements early and will protect them from agents who falsely convince them they need to.”

On their position going forward, Premier said, “If we feel that enough students hold out until February, and we see that the Universities are informing and encouraging them to do so, then we might be inclined to take part in the scheme next year.’

Review: City Rhythms

0

Named a poet of our times, Tom Capon presents his photographs at Art Jericho in his first solo show: City Rhythms. Using a camera, natural soft light and everyday people, Capon manages to capture the beautiful moments of life that would otherwise be missed – he makes the unremarkable, remarkable.

Set around Oxford and Oxford Street in London, Capon moves about the streets capturing movements, expressions and actions of the young people that live there. Things we are faced with everyday such as crowds, shops, fashion brands, buses, street signs and English flags (it had been a Jubilee and Olympic summer, after all) surround his subjects, creating chaos in the city. Yet, drawn into this chaos we find collective notes of serenity, simplicity and clarity and his photographs encourage us to discover more about the people in them and the lives that they live. Stripes and belts create lines and flow, gestures unknowingly mirrored by people create symmetry, and like colours unite the streets and subjects through the photographs.

We too are united with the streets and the people on them because of the sound effects created especially for the exhibition by Marley Pritchard – busy chatterings of the crowds, cars humming in the background, buskers playing “Here Comes the Sun” encircle the gallery, allowing us to be more closely involved with the photographs. The feel and sounds of the streets, the subtle moments that he captures: a tender moment between a couple at an ice cream shop, friends sharing cigarettes on the street, a little girl in awe of a Dalmatian balloon, and the pensive expression of a brunette with a Beatles shirt walking through a crowd (which was incidentally my favourite), render this exhibition rather special and particularly charming.

If you are a budding photographer, interested in urban life and fashion, or just want to see if you know anyone in the photographs, you should go and see this exhibition and experience these colourful streets captured so beautifully by Capon.  

‘Twas the Summer of Scandal

0

‘My abuse is a gift. It will enrich your diary.’ So sneers Lord Byron at his doctor, William Polidori, in Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry. Entering Byron’s service in 1816, Polidori was paid £500 by John Murray, a publisher, to keep a record of his master’s travels to be written up into a biography.

That the resultant account was so highly censored is indicative of the shocking and extraordinary literary communion he observed. For on the 25th of May, 1816, Byron entered the company of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and Claire Clairemont – his lover and Mary’s stepsister. It was the start of a summer that made a dramatic and indelible imprint upon the face of English Romantic poetry, and provided the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Gothic sensation, Frankenstein.

It’s on this day that Brenton begins his play, and the first act traces the extraordinary happenings in Switzerland over those weeks. He shows us that incredible evening, where, sheltering from a raging storm in Byron’s Villa Diodati, the group descends into a wild night of debauchery and ghost stories, bullying the hapless Polidori, recreating the parable of Plato’s cave, and ending with Shelley being plagued by haunting hallucinations. It was on this night that Frankenstein was born.

The Romantic poets are so often portrayed as isolated, troubled, heroic individuals; it takes plays like Bloody Poetry to reveal that their writing was born from their relationships and the social web in which they operated.

Poetry becomes inherently personal between the members of the group. It is an implement for taunting: ‘We tread on fire! The avenging Power his hell on earth hath spread!’ yells Claire, mocking Shelley’s over-serious revolutionary urges. But it is also the medium by which they uncover each other’s private secrets. When Mary accuses Percy of sleeping with Claire, she uses his poetry as evidence: ‘Three nights ago you told me you wanted to sit up, “To write.” Don’t think you were a-writing, my dear, you were ‘going a-down’ Claire’s ‘many a-winding river’. In your boat. No?’

But this intimately social function rubs up against the judgemental, hypocritical scrutiny of the English press, who feed the hungry appetites of their equally judgemental readership. Not much has changed. ‘The world is catching fire, the oppressors have bloodied their hands! But what excites the educated classes? The behaviour of the rich and famous in bed!’ moans Percy. The social utopia briefly experienced by the group in Switzerland quickly becomes an impossibility.

And it’s Shelley who above all feels how achingly ineffectual his writing is in a country that will not listen. In his poem ‘To the Men of England’ which forms part of the opening scene to the play, he pleads: ‘Men of England, wherefore plough for the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care the rich robes your tyrants wear?’ It’s a question which goes unanswered. ‘I write poems,’ he says. ‘But most of the world cannot even read.’

It’s so fitting, then, that this incredible ensemble at the heart of our literary heritage should remain in our cultural imagination. It’s something that Brenton, writing about his own play, was keenly conscious of: ‘Byron, Shelley, Mary and Claire are moderns. They belong to us. They suffered exile from a reactionary, mean England, of which ours in the 1980s (and increasingly ours in the 2010s) is an echo. They were defeated, they also behaved, at times abominably to each other. But I wrote Bloody Poetry to celebrate and to salute them.’ And what a celebration it is.

Review: Happy Birthday Edward Lear

0

Edward Lear is mainly known for his nonsense drawings, poems and children’s books.  The new exhibition at the Ashmolean aims to introduce us to a whole other side of the man, and show us the great artistic skill which often goes unacknowledged. 

He was born in 1812, the penultimate of 21 children.  He first travelled aboard, to Italy, in 1837, and thus began a lifelong fascination with travel.  He was a troubled man, suffering from epilepsy, insecurity and loneliness, and he saw his travel as a way of compensating for this.  He is said to have proclaimed “I HATE LIFE unless I WORK always”.  The exhibition opens with a series of studies, mainly of birds.  Many of these pieces are plates or studies, in watercolour and other media, commissioned by John Gould (then principal curator and taxidermist for London Zoo) for his 1837 book ‘Birds of Europe’, among other Natural History books.  These are large volumes created for scientists, which is reflected in Lear’s drawings: the details are minute.  The highlight piece of this section is a yellow macaw, from Lear’s own ‘Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidea, or Parrots’, which is beautifully detailed, with astonishingly bright colours.  It is these pieces which have most likely drawn people to the exhibition; they are featured in all the publicity, but it almost feels as if the curator has acknowledged that there is not enough in them to sustain an entire exhibition.  They were made principally for a scientific purpose, not as art for display.  Hanging them in the corridor, a space we naturally progress through has eliminated the potential for them to become the viewer’s sole focus. 

The main gallery space is a single room, and hung almost exclusively with landscapes.  Lear was able to travel greatly thanks to having widely spread friends and patrons who commissioned him to draw various places, for instance India, the Holy Land, and Istanbul.  The landscapes he created are often of near fantastical scenes, with extraordinary light conditions, and often of imposing mountain landscapes, appealing to a sense for the exotic and adventurous. The cases in the centre bring the exhibition together well; they contain for the most part his published travel journals, which he of course illustrated, and his nonsense drawings, poems and children’s books, which enabled him to afford to travel.   Also included are some of his illustrations for Tennyson poems.

The real test of the exhibition is that one does not have to be familiar with Lear’s nonsense children’s books to find real merit and interest.   It resists the temptation to constantly justify his appeal as an artist, and lets his art speak for itself.  The Ashmolean remains one of the country’s best museum experiences, and this exhibition is no exception.