It was about time we included a woman amongst Oxford’s unusual literati and this week we look at one of the boldest women of the nineteenth century. Gertrude Bell was a writer, traveller, archaeologist, political official and part-time spy. An influential and remarkable women, she made her mark on history despite the constraints imposed by her gender.

Gertrude was born in County Durham to a wealthy family. Her mother died when she was just three years old, creating a close relationship with her father who encouraged her love for travelling. She went to university at Queens College London before attending LMH aged seventeen. Bell studied Modern History, one of the few subjects allowed offered to women at university and graduated with a first.

She had a considerable contempt for virtually all of her sex; there were few women who had earnt her admiration or respect. Perhaps this is due to a lack of female figures in her life. Nevertheless, her step-mother, Florence Bell appears to have instilled in Bell a passion for writing through her work as a playwright and children’s author. Florence also encouraged her anti-feminist tendencies. Bell became secretary of the Women’s Anti-Suffrage League, feeling that women were not sufficiently educated to deserve the right to vote. This may have inspired her to promote the education of Iraqi women later on in her life as a means of ameliorating the position of women.

This woman towered over others intellectually, exuding confidence and commanding the attention of all. Virginia Woolf described her as ‘a masterful woman who has everyone under her thumb, and makes you feel a little inefficient.’ Few men could keep up with her but she found her equal in a married man, Charles Doughty-Wylie. Rather uncharacteristically, Bell wrote passionate love letters to Charles but the pair never consummated their love. Tragedy ensued when Charles led the troops at Sith and one of the first to die.

She then threw herself into her work to distract herself. A thirst for adventure drove Bell across Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia. She was fluent in several languages and very knowledgeable about the cultures and traditions of countries in the Middle East. Bell played a key role in forming modern Iraq and with British communication and policy-making. Known as the ‘uncrowned queen of Iraq’, she schmoozed with politicians, charming and exerting her influence.

Increasing conflicts between tribes in Iraq hindered her work and Bell eventually turned to archaeology. In her spare time Gertrude also climbed the Swiss alps including peaks rarely attempted by men. She became one of the greatest mountaineers of her time and now has a ridge named after her.

Her achievements and confidence would be remarkable even today and are all the more impressive given the period. Fearless, genderless,and adventurous, Gertrude Bell was undeniably unlike any other Victorian woman.

Hard, sharp and as short – in some cases – as a single paragraph, Diane Williams’ short stories in Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty are ethereal gems. Williams has enjoyed a long career in fiction to date, both as a writer and an editor. Currently editing NOON – an American magazine committed to promoting the most original and avant-garde of contemporary authors – Williams is constantly exposed to the latest developments on the literary scene.

As such, her prose is interesting in the sense that it is born out of the most progressive of literary circles. In Vicky Swanky is a Beauty, Williams’ style is elliptical and economical, matched by honesty and revelation. The stories are very short, some only a paragraph long; they are composed of an exciting amalgamation of abstract fantastical ideas and practical honest-to-goodness human application.

Although some stories are opaque to the point of being baffling, usually Williams manages to tread the fine line between intriguing and simply inaccessible fantasy. Williams has previously described how music is an important influence on her composition process, and this comes out in the patterning and repetition of sounds and rhythms that structure her work at the level of sentences, paragraphs and whole stories.

Take the final sentence of ‘Protection, Prevention, Gazing, Gratified Desire’, for example, ‘You must have heard of the expression – the apple of my eye? – And we know how to cry – Help!’ The assonance which echoes through ‘eye’ and ‘cry’, coupled with the tonal modulations engendered by question followed by exclamation, instils a sing-song quality to the prose, echoing the fantastical element of its subject matter.

The stories themselves are mere instances, yet I would resist the term ‘flash fiction’ to describe them. This seems inappropriate even for the stories only 28 words long, each mini-narrative contains a rich seam of implication, connotation and conceptual progression within it. Williams ties these aspects together in an imaginative construct which entirely displaces, entirely frustrates, and entirely surprises the consciousness that approaches them. This is one of the most engaging features of Williams’ work: the reader is irresistibly engaged, if only because in some cases one has to work quite hard to get to grips with it.

I would say, however, that the stories are best read in conjunction with each other. One story alone cannot give you enough of a flavour of Williams’ style – her language, the sound and tone of her prose – and it is better to read several together in order to get this rewarding sense of her method. Her stories are poised with extraordinary balance, relying on an equilibrium that is always in danger of slipping away. A badly placed comma or a poorly chosen phrase could cause collapse, but Williams maintains them beautifully.

This is a fantastic and diverting collection of short stories which I would thoroughly recommend. Their strength lies in their deft combination of intellectual and aesthetic appeal.

Modern Art Oxford’s incumbent exhibition, ‘Piercing Brightness’ by the London-based artist Shezad Dawood, is not for the casual viewer. Comprising two video installations and a number of ‘Paintings on Textile’, this collection is an intellectual and aesthetic assault on the senses.

However, this is not a dismissal of the artistic merits of the exhibition but simply a warning to those who might normally expect the art to do the bulk of the work. Instead, Dawood forces his audience into unexpected places, following channels of thought that confront ideas of racial integration, universal existence and transcendence of reality. The task is not easy but Dawood surprises us with his ability to transform MAO into his own playground of dreams.

The exhibition leads us through three distinct phases of thought, each one building on the previous until the final climactic film, which is both the culmination of the previous works and the apex of Dawood’s achievement here. Ascending the stairs to the first floor, one is plunged into an overwhelming darkness punctuated only by the sounds and sights of Dawood’s Trailer to the eponymous feature length film Piercing Brightness.

The film ‘tells the story of Shin and Jiang, a young Chinese man and woman, sent to earth from another planet to retrieve the ‘Glorious 100’’. Plot, however, seems irrelevant in this film of rapid cuts and hypnotic sequences, which features the repeated image of a hand stacking sugar cubes. The non-linear narrative forces the reader to forfeit their ingrained perceptions of film and embrace a fragmented vision of the world.

If the film achieves anything beyond the presentation of a chaotic existence, it is to suggest that whilst life is a continuous process, death is itself a singular event; the collision of human interaction, made explicit through the violent coming together of both characters in a road accident, reminds us of our own desire to communicate on both a verbal and physical level.

The second room is anti-climactic after the powerful imagery of his initial assault. A series of paintings entitled ‘Textile Painting’ is at best an examination of alternative texture in the medium of painting. Rather than building up layers with the paint, Dawood reverses the traditional process, painting flat blocks of colour onto undulating textile surfaces. Through pieces such as ‘Cosmic Egg’, a giant red egg-shape with a blue centre, and ‘Iris’, a similar shape but on its side, we can appreciate Dawood’s jokes on context and perception.

In all of Dawood’s paintings, the apparent randomness of the image is given meaning – whether sincerely or ironically – through the title. Thus he demonstrates the disjuncture between art and language in presenting images and ideas. In the final room, the distinction between art and life breaks down as we view this film. We can no longer be considered viewers but become active participants.

The film builds a visual and musical dreamscape in which modernity and tradition collide. The hypnotic effect of the Moroccan music, combined with the abstract images of light and the figurative representation of musicians, creates a meditative vision in which the film becomes for us a waking dream

By providing giant beanbags in which to rest while watching, the soporific effect is redoubled. The mystical elements of the film, coming to light as it pays its debt to Gysin’s Sufism-influenced Dream Machine, fascinate, but it is ultimately Dawood’s expansive vision that entrances. This exhibition will no doubt be condemned by those whose experience of art has been exclusively understood through the mediums of painting and sculpture.

Whilst I am the first to question the effectiveness of film as art, having seen many examples in which the potential artistic impact was lost in the excitement of technological modernity, Dawood’s films, especially New Dream Machine Project, rank alongside the most interesting one will ever see.

Christopher Hitchens studied PPE at Balliol college, during which time he was a bisexual Trotskyist, and reportedly ‘very attractive in every sense’. He ‘dressed like Che Guevara and charmed like Marilyn Monroe.’ 40 years on, Hitchens died, twice married, borderline alcoholic, borderline obese, and borderline NeoCon. It seems that a lot changed after he left this town…

Whilst at Balliol, Hitchens was involved in left-wing campaigning, frequently taking part in protests. His Marxist credentials were called into question, however, as his social life seemed to revolve around Conservative cliques, and a fair few of his old university buddies have done pretty well for themselves on the right of British politics since graduation.

His Balliol nickname was ‘hypocritchens’ – and with his strange and unhappy marriage of socialist campaigning and Tory drinking, it’s easy to see why. At Oxford, Hitchens was legendary, able to seduce pretty much anything that brushed past him. Gleefully returning to an old boarding school pastime, Hitchens went about accruing a string of male companions. His long-term friendship with Martin Amis was, it seems, more of an unrequited love affair from Hitchens’ side. Sadly, Hitchens was forced to settle for sleeping with Amis’ sister, Sally.

Hitchens sent out ripples of titillation in 2010 when he revealed that he had engaged in affairs with two male future members of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet (just in time to coincide with the launch of his autobiography Hitch-22). Years as a self-proclaimed ‘contrarian’ journalist followed, spanning a vast range of topics. The thread of consistency was an inherent suspicion of authority, which was primarily directed towards the right. Hitchens’ public persona however itself took a large step to the right in mid-September, 2001. He redirected his rhetoric against a new breed of ‘islamofascism’ that had brought down the World Trade Centres and which was now presenting itself as a very real world threat.

His support for the Iraq War saw Hitchens labelled a Neo-Conservative in some disillusioned quarters – a label he vigorously (and justifiably) rejected. A long held feud with Conservative brother Peter had always been mysterious, with uncertain origins, but it seemed at last to resolve itself in the years preceding Hitchens’ death. The relationship thawed and following Christopher’s passing, genuine glimmers of warmth come through in Peter’s Daily Mail column.

Christopher joined the ranks of Richard Dawkins’ anti-God army, as one of the ‘four Horsemen’. Drinking and smoking heavily, and with a quickly expanding waist, Hitchens refused to let himself be slowed down by age. His work continued even once cancer set in. Hitchens died late last year, and we can be certain he had no death-bed conversion, having described the comfort provided as ‘delusory’. Hitchens had a tragically short life, but it is perhaps by virtue of his obvious self-contradictions that by the end he seemed to have lived enough for two.

What makes a beautiful woman beautiful? We’ve all heard the clichés; that beauty is in the eye of the beholder or that it comes from the deepest regions of the soul. It’s one of those abstract concepts we can describe at great length, but never really define.

Dove’s notorious Advertising Age campaign which boasts ‘real women’ and ‘natural beauty’ asks readers to chose between pejorative statements – ‘fat’ or ‘fab’, ‘wrinkled’ or ‘wonderful’. Conversely, infamous Daily Mail columnist Samantha Brick recently commented how 57 year old presenter Mary Beard is simply ‘too ugly for TV’.

Clearly, mass media has done much to shape and define what is considered ‘beautiful’ in contemporary culture, and unfortunately, what is considered beautiful is youth. But this has led to an oversimplification of how we view those who are less youthful.

Stepping into the glass fronted Brian Duke Foyer is stepping into an appreciation of beauty of women from the twenty something to the over sixty. RONA’s ‘STILL beautiful’ exhibition features six very diverse, refreshingly natural portraits of women. All the models are over seventy, each portrait alongside a corresponding painting of the same woman in her twenties. These are the everyday women who make up the British population behind the Botox and Barbie of the media. The message of RONA’s work is very clear: it’s time to celebrate older women and, as the artist says, ‘give them the respect they deserve.’

It is impossible to ignore the attractive paintings of the younger women; such as the carefree expression of young Phyl, her smile and classical good looks reminiscent of a young Audrey Hepburn. Likewise Betty Blandino, a brunette whose cheekbones are accentuated by the monochrome contrast, a colour scheme adopted for all portraits in the collection. The light wash of pink used for these women’s paintings instantly draws the viewer’s eye to the bold pink legend of the portrait next to it, the smaller, square painting of that same woman as an elderly lady.

This pink caption, ‘beautiful’, proudly proclaims the underlying principle of the exhibition.This caption, coupled with the black outline of the models is reminiscent of Warhol’s monochromatic prints, although the realist style presents the women in an honest, natural way. Yes, we can appreciate the attractive younger women, but this beauty is immediately apparent as soon as we enter the room –their portraits being almost double the size of their partners, after all. But the smaller sized paintings urge us to gaze closer at the mature women. The fine lines of Betty and the crinkles around her smile are worn, not with a desperate attempt to look younger than her years, but with a frankness, a satisfaction with who she is.

In RONA’s work we are at liberty to connect the young with the old, recognizing the differing kinds of beauty which comes with each. Although the older portraits could benefit from a splash of pink, we can appreciate the vitality in the faces of these worldly women. And it is this appreciation of life at all stages of life, that is beauty.

Watching Lewis in Oxford… 

Watching Lewis as an inhabitant of O-town is a thoroughly – though I hate to use this word – ‘meta’ experience. There’s something really wrong about sitting in a dirty student house, drinking water from a jar ‘cos there are no cups left and procrastinating by watching Lewis and Hathaway strutting around the very library you are avoiding. At first it’s enjoyable: housemates competing to name the crime scene first and fervently hoping that this is the episode you saw being filmed. Before long, however, it all becomes a bit too stressful.

One of my housemates, a recent convert to the cult of rowing, became quite agitated when he couldn’t identify the boathouse where the body had been found. This failure irked him so much that he felt compelled to interrupt Snog, Marry, Avoid, several days later, to inform us triumphantly that it had been Univ’s. That one time they show the window of your first-year room (third floor, to the far left of the KA on Parks Road), is initially exhilarating, but you then spend the rest of the episode not concentrating on whodunnit but wondering whether the camera will ever pan back there. 

It’s sort of like Freud’s The Uncanny (ooh er); all the surroundings are exactly the same but a bit fucked and infinitely more exciting. This is particularly upsetting when, on a grey and rainy day on Abingdon Road, the ‘students’ in the programme are rolling around on lawns in the sun, banging their tutors and actually seeming interested in their subject. First off, where are all the bangable tutors? Secondly, the ‘students’ all seem about thirty years old, a suspicion proved recently by the appearance of Louise from Hollyoaks. 

While the Bod and the colleges are portrayed pretty well – albeit with some funny pseudonyms – our vibrant Oxford clubbing scene is grossly under-represented. All these ‘students’ seem to do is read poetry to one another, write letters and have weird sex. The one time a ‘club’ was featured it took the form of a converted church-cum-S&M factory, which funnily enough didn’t function as a sports bar and grill in the daytime. But I guess, while Lewis’s Oxford might be more exciting, if reading poetry by candlelight means putting yourself in danger of being bludgeoned to death by one of your housemates or tutors, Jägerbomb in Junction are probably a safer option.

Carmella Crinnion

Director’s Cut

Cambridge graduate Dan Reed spends most of his time making documentary films about global problems such as the Japanese Tsunami and the Mumbai terror attacks. When he’s not addressing these global issues, he can often be found back in England shooting episodes of Lewis. I had the chance to speak to him about his involvement in the series.

‘‘The filming schedule for Lewis is only four and half weeks and only one week of that is actually in Oxford,’’ he told me, ‘‘but, the Oxford trip is definitely the highlight of the shoot.’’ Despite the fact that the show revolves around the city, Reed and his team shoot most of it in London, for cost reasons, using the city mainly for its fabled college interiors. I probed him about which colleges he’d shot in; after identifying ‘the pelican symbol’ and ‘totem pole in the quad’ at one, we decided it was probably Corpus Christi.

The reason that Lewis get such great locations, Reed informs me, is largely down to producer Chris Burt, an Oxford grad who has great relationships with a number of the colleges. In fact, ‘‘All Souls are the only hold outs’’, still resisting having their college committed to the small screen.

 Reed hopes that he’ll be shooting Lewis again this summer and explains that the location is a big reason for his desire to continue with the series, ‘‘shooting in Oxford is fantastic. You have a film about an Oxford detective and shooting around all of the actual colleges gives it a magical, charmed feel.’’ The location, for him, is essential to the appeal of the show, ‘‘It’s watched by people all over the world because of its amazing setting. The architecture becomes a protagonist in the show.’’

Reed neatly sums up his appreciation of the good fortune of being able to direct episodes of this series on location in Oxford by stating, ‘‘there are few more pleasant jobs in TV’’.

Nick Hilton 

Spare Parts

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to sit down with professional extra Harry Rudd, who has brief appearances in Dark Shadows, Snow White and the Huntsman, and most recently, Lewis. I asked him how Lewis (and filming in Oxford in general) compared to previous work he had done. 

“To tell the truth, all TV shoots adhere to the same fixed format, and Lewis wasn’t much different. Having said that, being in beautiful Oxford on a sunny day made for one of the best day’s shooting I have ever done. The other extras (or ‘supporting artistes’, I should say!) were all very much in agreement.”

I wondered if there was anything special that stood out from that day’s filming. Harry smiled, “Well, as an extra, you are given about as much freedom as a prisoner of war. There is always a crew member on your case, constantly telling you where to be and what to do. But for Lewis, we had to walk to location, which basically means a nice stroll through Oxford. 

“Yes, I realise this does sound painfully mundane, but being let loose as an extra is a rarity, and it gives you that feeling of naughtiness comparable to your first time skinny dipping.” And was it integral to the production that it was set in Oxford? “I believe so. You certainly wouldn’t be able to capture all the natural charm and beauty of Oxford in a studio!”

Be sure to check out Harry in his BAFTA-worthy role as ‘Man crossing street #4’! 

Nathan O’Neill