Thursday, May 8, 2025
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Oxford student sets up volunteer tutoring service

Felix O'Mahony
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Oxford student sets up volunteer tutoring service

A student at the University of Oxford has founded the “Coronavirus Tutoring Initiative”, a service which pairs university students with school students in need of tutoring due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Jacob Kelly, who set up the Initiative earlier this week, told Cherwell: “Having seen the news that schools were closing, what struck me was the effect it would have on the disparity between those students who receive private tutoring and those who do not. Whilst many young people will continue to receive face to face teaching over the next few months, others will come from families who can’t afford this privilege and are therefore at risk of falling behind.

“I know a lot of my friends in college were pretty miserable at the thought of having weeks on end stuck at home with nothing to do. It seemed like a pretty logical step to connect the two groups in a way that benefited both of them.”

Schools in the UK were forced to close on Friday 20th March as part of the Government’s attempts to stem the spread of coronavirus. A number of schools had shut their doors earlier in the week due to staff shortages and fears of the virus spreading around school communities.

According to Kelly, the response from the student body was “overwhelmingly positive”. He says that he expected “friends in college and maybe a few others would get involved but instead word has spread to lots of different universities. We have now got close to 3,000 tutors signed up and there’s more appearing every minute.

“We’re having to work quickly to keep up with the demand so I’ve assembled a small team to help with both the administrative side of things along with ensuring that word of the initiative is going to reach as many of the young people who need it as possible. We’re hoping that we can start rolling out the initiative to students at some point this week, but want to be sure the whole process is running smoothly before that happens.”

Although end-of-year assessments such as GCSEs and A-Levels have been cancelled for this academic year, the service is still hoping to “help young people to engage with their work in a really positive way”.

Students can volunteer with the Coronavirus Tutoring Initiative by filling out a form on their website, or emailing any ideas to [email protected].

Image: Ellie Wilkins

Electronic Music: the Sound and the Sceptics

Mila Ottevanger
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Electronic Music: the Sound and the Sceptics

When anyone brings up the topic of electronic instruments, it is always very easy to dismiss it. They are casually taken to be a crutch for artists like Britney Spears, One Direction, or Ke$ha, musicians often considered untalented and image-based. And unmarketable without elements like autotune. They are a cheap tool used to keep the music sounding ‘acceptable’. A clean, polished product, ready to be sold.

To challenge this image of electronic music, I’ll first establish why these instruments and techniques are used. There’s a huge difference between an executive demanding a song be ‘cleaned up’ for popular consumption and a work like Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56), widely recognised as the first piece of electronic music. Electronic techniques aren’t new. The Theremin, an electronic instrument patented in 1928, creates an eerie, swooping sound (heard on Portishead’s Dummy, for example).  Another good example would be the solely electronic piece ‘Artikulation’ (1958) by the Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti. Here, the art is inseparable from the instruments.

Electronic instruments are present throughout the 20th century, with their influence exploding in the latter half. ‘70s avant-garde rock group CAN, on their 1971 album Tago Mago, open the song ‘Oh Yeah’ with the entire track reversed, before playing it normally. By the halfway point, the strange ritualistic whispering and the silvery crescendos start to make sense: they are the cymbals and the vocals. From 1979, Jean-Michel Jarre was setting world records for concert turnout in this genre. Electronica developed from niche experimentalism into accessible popularity. There’s a perception of an urban-electronic and rural-acoustic split. However, on his two volumes of Selected Ambient Works, the highly influential Aphex Twin proves that Electronica can come from, and be inspired by, rural spaces. The genre’s expanse is undoubtedly far-reaching.

As for autotune, this computer-programmed technique was developed in 1997, adding to the ever-growing arsenal of electronic sounds. And it was swiftly taken up by Pop music. Listen to Cher’s 1998 comeback hit ‘Believe,’ which The Verge says turned autotune into a ‘bitchy shorthand’ for saying a person cannot sing. However, many Indie artists—traditionally guitar-heavy—use it unabashedly, such as Bon Iver in the haunting, mumbling song, ‘Woods’. In Hip-Hop too, with Kanye West on 808s & Heartbreak. It is clear that autotune can be artful. It just has a bad reputation, perhaps due to how widespread it has become.

JAY-Z, Death Cab for Cutie and Christina Aguilera have all denounced it. Michael Bublé too—but he admits to using it on chart-oriented projects. Everything must be perfect to succeed. Or, at least. it did in 2009, at the height of these intra-industry protests. Now, in an era of apparent ‘authenticity’, it is autotune (i.e. the surreptitious cleaning up of vocals) which is being rejected. Ke$ha recently showed great disappointment when her music was ‘corrected’ by her producer. In contrast, on Clairo’s album Immunity, we simultaneously find a song like ‘North’, labelled by The Guardian as ‘garage-rock’, beside the highly synthesised, autotune-drenched track, ‘Closer To You’.

Moreover, discussing Electronica at the expense of acoustic music frames the debate as a contest: one genre must dominate, the other must die. This is certainly not the case. Our generation, thanks to streaming platforms, is able to listen to bands from REM to Nirvana, keeping Rock and Grunge alive. Furthermore, one of the biggest movements right now is Indie Rock. This past decade has seen Indie acts like The Wombats, Blossoms, and Hozier acquire massive acclaim and popularity. I’d suggest that, generally, contemporary music hopes to be seen as less produced, as ‘authenticity’ becomes a prized attribute in a backlash against homogeneity. The ghostly presence of the producer behind the glass screen disappears when self-made artists such as girl in red and Post Malone find celebration on Soundcloud and YouTube. Electronic production is an accessible way to make music, shedding the negative associations of autotune and becoming more admired as a plausible mode of artistic expression.

Electronic and acoustic techniques are not mutually exclusive. Stylistic trends move in cycles. No technique ever really dies. The Electronica of the ‘80s gave way to the Grunge and BritPop of the ‘90s, just as the Electropop of the early 2000s gave way to contemporary Indie Rock. Like with any art form, there is always an ebb and flow. To dismiss electronic instruments is simply to ignore the music styles of the future… and, it is clear, the styles of today too.

This House Believes… This Government Has Been A Disaster

Eleanor Ruxton and William Prescott
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This House Believes… This Government Has Been A Disaster

Proposition – Eleanor Ruxton, Keble College

The last election was, for many, the political equivalent of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Those of us who are neither die-hard Tories nor Corbynistas have been followed by a gnawing sense of unease ever since. Central to our lasting discomfort is an unshakeable sense that this government is too comfortable with reckless decisions.

Despite boasting a team of many supposedly seasoned politicians and advisors, the current Government is characterised by a reckless immaturity. Some of the Government’s more prominent members radiate either political inexperience or a tendency towards misjudgement. This isn’t an attempt to trash baby-faced Rishi Sunak, somebody whose defining moment – a global economic crisis – lies ahead. No, more worrying is the inclusion of those individuals associated (some allegedly) with rash decisions. Hiding behind the guise of ‘strong government’, and under the rumoured patchy and lacklustre leadership of Boris, these characters have been able to thrive.

Let’s begin with everyone’s favourite battle-axe, Priti Patel. Her ability to act rashly was demonstrated in jaw-dropping style back in 2017 when she arranged unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials. More recently, allegations emanating from her civil-servant colleagues have hinted at a tendency towards tantrums characteristic of a moody teen.  ‘Why is everyone so fucking useless?’, is something one would expect from the mouth of a 14-year-old, not a Home Secretary (allegedly!). Patel’s clash with the highly experienced Philip Rutnam is not surprising; it represents not just a lack of political maturity but open hostility towards it.  

Nowhere did we see this attitude more clearly than in Dominic Cummings’ advertisement for political ‘weirdos’. We all know how that ended. What is revealed to us is a government desperate to portray itself as pulsing with young blood, stronger and more ‘Brexity’ than ever. Anybody who experienced a healthy dose of teenage angst will be familiar with this sort of iconoclasm. 

This same attitude was reflected in the Government’s initial response to COVID-19. Desperate to prove its grasp on superior science, Johnson’s team of medical experts began to pursue a policy of ‘herd immunity’, despite Chinese data suggesting it was too risky to do so. The number of elderly people and those with existing health conditions is simply too high for such a strategy to be effective. The ‘don’t tell me what to do’ and ‘I know best’ attitude of Boris’ team has been juvenile at best, and deadly at worst.  

But is there potential for the Government to grow-up fast? Certainly, the shift in tone on the issue of social distancing suggests it is learning from its mistakes. Ironically, one of the youngest members of the cabinet, Rishi Sunak, has shown the greatest maturity in his response to the pandemic. At least somebody is prepared to make grown-up decisions. With any luck, this current crisis will act as a coming-of-age, and the Government will look back on its disastrous early years with a new attitude and more stable temperament.

Opposition – William Prescott, University College

With four and a half years to go before the next election, it’s impossible to make any long-term judgment on the Johnson government. Whether it ultimately proves a ‘disaster’ likely will depend on whether, in the short term, it botches the coronavirus outbreak, and, in the longer term, on whether it delivers Brexit without breaking up the United Kingdom.

First, coronavirus. The Government’s handling of this will be judged not on how things look now but on how they will look once the crisis has abated. Controversy over the ‘herd immunity strategy’—devised, it should be noted, by experts and not the PM himself—and questions about whether there has been sufficient testing certainly don’t paint the Government in a favourable light. But the Government still enjoys some goodwill and, as the Chinese and South Korean experiences show, even initial missteps can later be outshone by later successes at containment. On the other hand, if the situation completely spirals out of control, Johnson’s reputation, and that of his government, may never recover.

Domestically, things haven’t always run smoothly, but they’ve hardly been disastrous either. Under Johnson, the Conservatives finally have abandoned the Thatcherite obsession with shrinking the state for the sake of shrinking the state. This return of a more pragmatic Conservatism, no doubt assisted by Johnson’s personal lack of ideological conviction on most issues, is welcome news. That the Tories are now dependent on northern seats is likely to force the Conservatives to make at least some attempt to ‘level-up’ Britain. Moreover, while the controversial Mr Cummings has much influence and some questionable ideas, he does not always call the shots on big issues. The decision to proceed with HS2 clearly demonstrates this.

The greatest long-term challenge for Johnson will be holding the United Kingdom together while delivering the second stage of Brexit. Johnson did secure a major political victory in actually getting Britain out of the EU. When you consider that he inherited a nine-year-old government, a seriously divided party, and a weak parliamentary position, it’s remarkable how he turned his position around. However, these achievements will count for nothing if the United Kingdom disintegrates either under his watch or shortly after his departure. It remains unclear what, if anything, will come out of the talks with the EU over the post-Brexit trade deal. A crash out on WTO terms remains a live possibility, and the economic consequences of this are unknown.

The real problem with Brexit is the potential damage to the union with Scotland. Polls indicate a dangerously high level of support for independence, due largely to 2014 ‘no’ voters who backed ‘remain’ in 2016 switching to ‘yes’. While Johnson will, rightly, block any new referendum for now, this line may be harder to sustain if the nationalists secure a majority at the 2021 Holyrood elections. Even if, as I suspect, Johnson continues to stare down Ms Sturgeon, the parliamentary arithmetic makes a second Scottish independence referendum likely if the Conservatives fail to secure another majority in 2024. Next time, the referendum outcome is far from guaranteed, and much of the blame will be laid at the feet of Johnson for alienating Scottish opinion over Brexit whether or not he remains in Downing Street. A Conservative and Unionist government that kills the union would be a failure of epic proportions. 

If the events of the last four years have taught us anything, it’s that politics is totally unpredictable and that you prematurely write off leaders at your peril. Johnson’s enemies risk making a terrible mistake if they’re counting on his imminent self-destruction. They may be in for an unpleasant surprise.  

The Pandemic of Panic Buying

Isabella Colletta
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The Pandemic of Panic Buying

In an appeal to the public, the British Retail Consortium has pleaded with customers not to buy more than they would typically need, with the reassurance that “there is enough for everyone if we all work together”. The internet has recently been overrun with photos of countless bare supermarket shelves and videos of people waiting in endless queues for shop doors to open. Panic buying has swept across the country, and scarcity has become a new symptom of the coronavirus pandemic. Whilst initially essential goods such as non-perishable foods and health supplies quickly flew off the shelves, supermarket chains are now dealing with a limited supply of almost every type of item. Hoarding has only encouraged further hoarding, and the sight of empty shelves only induces greater panic in people. 

However, panic buying is, as a means of preventing the individual impact of scarcity, inescapably, a luxury – and one which will hold lasting consequences in the weeks to come. For those who are at high risk from the virus, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions, stockpiling has only made them more vulnerable. Food banks across the country are also facing pressures as a result of mass hoarding, with many reporting a decrease in essential non-perishable goods such as pasta, rice, and long-lasting milk. Islington Foodbank in North London was the first centre to announce last week that it would be closed to the public from 23rd March. With a reduction in donations and volunteer numbers (35% of whom are aged 65 and over, as the Trussell Trust confirmed), their ability to function has been severely impacted. The risk that closures such as this may continue across the country presents a real threat as to how this pandemic may exacerbate food poverty already rife in Britain.

The uncertainty caused by an increase in those self-isolating and the government’s encouragement to stay at home and perform social distancing only reveals the  unsustainability of the current food aid system as a permanent method for tackling hunger. Regardless of the current pressures, food bank usage has seen a dramatic incline. According to figures collected by the Trussell Trust, food banks have given out over 800,000 food parcels between April and September 2019, the highest number since they firststarted collecting data in 2014. The levels of food insecurity pre-pandemic were already so high that last year that the Environmental Audit Committee suggested introducing a Minister for Hunger to ensure the government’s response to food poverty as a national issue. Food aid and charitable endeavours have already been facing the struggle to combat the food poverty caused by long wait times for benefits. With the demand on food banks on a consistent incline, the recent reduction in donations and general limitation of supplies means the strain these centres are facing will only grow in the coming weeks.

There is never an opportune moment for a pandemic; the developments in COVID-19 means systems will inevitably be stretched. But the strain food banks are facing as a result of panicked stockpiling will have a severe impact on the thousands they intend to help. The recent announcement of school closures (and the inability of many to work as a result) means emergency food aid will have to prepare for unprecedented levels of demand. With no clear end date for social distancing, for the families that will be using food banks to get by over the next few weeks, hoarding food is a total impossibility.

Food parcels provided by centres under the Trussell Trust are intended to last a minimum of three days and provide people with ingredients for meals which are non-perishable and nutritionally balanced. The security net of hoarding supplies is not a functional part of food aid, and public efforts to stockpile only makes charitable efforts to combat food poverty more vulnerable. Supermarket chains have made an effort to combat the effects of stockpiling and reduce scarcity. Sainsbury’s and Asda have recently announced that they will prevent customers buying more than three of each food item. Sainsbury’s has also promised to prioritise vulnerable and elderly customers with its online deliveries, and numerous supermarkets have designated early shopping hours to senior citizens to allow them to get the items they require.

In unprecedented and uncertain circumstances, anxiety, even fear, is natural. The possibility that under quarantine people may struggle to access food and other necessities is undeniably sinister. But in panic, inevitably the most vulnerable come last. Food banks and voluntary aid centres rely on charity and public donation, leaving them liable to bear the brunt of shortages when they do set in. As the public continue to clean up the shelves of supermarkets and buy goods regardless of need, the act of panic buying reveals itself as an act of indulgence, not necessity.

Katya’s grocery haul left-overs

Katya Alban
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Katya’s grocery haul left-overs

Before being unexpectedly evicted from St. John’s College, I did a big Tesco shop and got a whole load of incredible items in the reduced section – hence the honey roasted salmon flakes. The next source of inspiration came from a friend’s love of cardamom which has now transferred onto me. It has added depth to my cooking and I recommend it in pretty much any recipe. After arriving home and perusing the kitchen I stumbled upon several long forgotten condiments, such as the chilli chutney included below. This recipe is the result of my attempt to make a creative dish with the ingredients I found at home. 

Katy’s grocery haul left-overs: Honey roasted salmon flakes in mixed-bean Asian smoky-sweet spiced vegetable stew with walnuts   

Serves 4

*measurements are not 100% exact as I tend to eyeball ingredients, so adjust to your taste. 

Ingredients: 

 2 packs of Tesco honey roasted salmon 

1 can mixed beans

½ can tomatoes 

⅓ cup capers to taste (these give the dish a great salty undertone)

Garlic cloves x3 to taste

1 cup of chopped walnuts (add at the end)

 ½ bag of spinach (a big bag – this wilts down a lot) 

1 courgette 

1 aubergine 

4 small red onions 

1 tbsp vegetable oil 

Spices/ condiments:

3 tbsp nutritional yeast (adds cheesy flavour and packed full of vitamins) 

1-2 tbsp sweet soy sauce to taste

Pinch of salt 

1 tbsp smoked paprika

Black pepper to taste

½ vegetable stock cube 

2 tbsp spicy chilli chutney 

3-4 cardamom pods

 Method:

1.  Peel and cut the onions, finely dice the garlic, cut up the aubergine or courgette into medium-sized chunks.

2.  Add some oil to a pan and add the onion and garlic. Fry until somewhat transparent slightly browned. (Cook for longer if you want it caramelized.) 

3.  Add courgette, aubergine and the dry spices (stock cube, paprika, pepper to taste, and cardamon pods).

4.  Cook for 10-15min, continuously stirring, or until soft and cooked through. 

5. Add ½ can of tomatoes once the vegetables are soft or even charring slightly, then start gradually adding handfuls of spinach, allowing it to wilt down.

6. Add the soy sauce, spicy chili chutney and cook for another 5-10 minutes. Adjust spices according to taste (I added more paprika at this point.) 

7. Add the nutritional yeast and serve! 

Is the coronavirus killing culture?

Emily Capon
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Is the coronavirus killing culture?

It feels like the end of days. Glastonbury and Eurovision have both been cancelled, and theatres, cinemas and galleries are closing their doors to the public for the foreseeable future. Arts events predicated on the very idea of a mass public gathering, like festivals and concerts, are scheduled no longer to take place. Cultural enrichment, for the time being, has had to be confined to the virtual. 

We take continual access to these cultural landmarks for granted, not truly feeling their value until they have been plucked, in one fell swoop, from our (freshly washed) hands. But how will this affect our relationship with the Arts that can usually be found humming gently beneath the hubbub of everyday life? Will they be greeted with open arms on their return, or will the return be gradual, as we settle into our new normal?

The virus continues to cause havoc across all areas of the arts; music, film, fashion, and theatre have all succumbed to the tyrannical new reign of COVID-19. But coronavirus is by no means the first instance of the Arts having to be sacrificed for global public health. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, theatres in London were closed in an effort to halt, or at least curb, the spread of the plague. These new restrictions forced players to abandon theatres altogether, or return to itinerant acting–setting out on the road and stopping to perform in towns. Shakespeare appeared in print for the first time in his career, when his poem Venus and Adonis was published. He also took this royally-enforced lull as an opportunity to compose The Rape of Lucrece, another seminal poem in his oeuvre.

So we have a historical precedent for this kind of thing. Unsurprisingly, though, in a world with such an effusive culture of entertainment, and perpetual distraction, the pandemic has sent culture as we know it almost entirely into meltdown. Patti Lupone, lamenting its closure, called Broadway in New York ‘the heartbeat of the city’, a sentiment that rings true across the broad spectrum of the cultural casualties. Cultural events in our collective social calendar provide landmarks upon which we pin plans, excitement, expectation. It’s only when these events are cancelled, and we’re thrown into a working-from-home, what’s-stopping-me-staying-in-pyjamas-all-day sort of abyss, that we yearn for that sense of looking ahead to something on the horizon. 

The sense of uncertainty that lingers around the virus is, for many, one of the hardest aspects to endure. For these cultural milestones, at least, it has forced them to close ‘indefinitely’, without prospect of an end date. Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen on Broadway has suffered from this interminability, lacking the economic resources to commit to an unspecified closure period. Hangmen will not return after we find our way back to the theatres, and who knows what else we might have lost? Aside from the terrifying effects on public safety, coronavirus is set to have an unparalleled impact on the economy. Arts and culture, sectors which have already faced significant funding cuts, may have to adapt to a new normal if we are to welcome them back to our stages, screens, and books. In a period of such ambiguity, we can only hope that Glastonbury will be able to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, in the fullest glory, and that arts and culture will wait, shining, at the end of the tunnel. 

Pembroke tutor imprisoned for indecent images

Mark Robins
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Pembroke tutor imprisoned for indecent images

TW: child pornography, sexual abuse

Philosophy professor Peter King has been jailed for possessing almost 3,000 indecent images. He was sentenced to seven months in custody and given a sexual harm prevention order.

Formerly a tutor at Pembroke, the college suspended King when informed that he was to appear in court last month. A statement released by the College said: “Pembroke was made aware of the police investigation and charges against Peter King, who provided some Philosophy teaching here, only the day before his court appearance in February. He was immediately suspended from his employment”.

In his case at Oxford Crown Court, King pleaded guilty to three counts of producing indecent images of children and one count of possessing a prohibited image of a child. James Mulholland, King’s representative, said the defendant had an “addiction or compulsion” to “repeatedly but intermittently” accessing indecent images of children. King compared himself to “someone who starts a sticker collection and wants the whole set”.

King was previously cautioned by police in 2007 after accessing illegal material, which he claimed he had used to research an article on the ethics of child pornography.

The paper, entitled “No Plaything: Ethical issues concerning child pornography”, discussed “the possibility of a morally acceptable form of child pornography”, though ultimately concluded that it was morally wrong. Regardless of his warning, prosecutors said that King continued to download images in “a repeated pattern of behaviour”.

King’s search history and hard drive showed he had regularly accessed illegal websites and had searched for terms such as “schoolgirl”. He was arrested in 2018 for visiting a Russian file-sharing website.

A Pembroke spokesperson said: “The college moved swiftly to put in place welfare and counselling arrangements for students and staff, and alternative teaching arrangements and academic support for all affected students.”

Having studied at Brasenose, King taught at Christ Church and Somerville before joining Pembroke, though the University said he was not centrally employed and had no faculty duties.

The University of Oxford has been contacted for comment.

Image Credit to David Smith / Wikimedia Commons. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Endangered Languages – The Loss of Human Identity

George Newton
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Endangered Languages – The Loss of Human Identity

The components that make up identity are complex. As humans, our personalities and cultures are formed by multiple factors; from the clothes we wear to the food we eat, we are all individual components of a larger society. A crucial element in society is language; without it, we are unable to communicate with others. Language provides us with a practical means to understand and express our needs, emotions and wishes.  But more than this, the ways in which we express ourselves contribute a great deal to who we are and where we come from.

In essence, language is a vehicle that facilitates the expression of similar human experiences from a particular group or community. Linguistic diversity is beautiful. Each language views the world from a different angle, offering different ways to express emotions and to describe the world around us. For instance, Japanese has eight words for ‘black’, with each term describing a different shade, and Finnish has different terms for ‘coffee break’ depending on when in the day the coffee is drunk.

Yet, some of these contributions are being threatened with extinction; according to the SIL Ethnologue, an annual reference publication of statistics regarding living human languages, 6.8% of the world’s living languages are critically endangered.  This means that year on year, we are rapidly losing languages, cultures and the people that practise them. 

When I first told people at home that I was going to Oxford to read Spanish and Portuguese, they looked at me as if I’d made some terrible mistake. “Why Portuguese?” they asked. As languages go, Portuguese is far from endangered; it is an official language in ten different countries, has 250 million native speakers (more than French), and is spoken on every continent. But even still, people ask “why?”.

While Portuguese is thriving, there are many languages that we risk losing because they are not passed down from generation to generation and are not being learned as a second language. This jeopardises the very existence of some of the world’s oldest languages and cultures in various indigenous communities around the world. The death of a language is much more than a set of obsolete grammar rules, it is a phenomenon that destroys the cultural heritage of a society that has constructed its idioms, colloquialisms and analogies over centuries to define the human experience in a particular region.

Throughout history, as has often been the case for Australasian and native American languages, government suppression of linguistic freedoms has resulted in the marginalisation and persecution of many minority groups.  Speakers have been provided with a choice between persecution or the adoption of the most widely spoken language. This intolerance is unproductive and threatens the diversity of human culture, as the persecutor wrongly places one culture and language in authority over another. A language and culture that have existed for centuries are wiped out.

The globalisation of world economies and the subsequent instruction of the most widely spoken languages have contributed to the extinction of many languages. The ‘usefulness’ of a language is determined by its potential to enable the learner/speaker to be in demand and thereby make money. Hence, it is hardly surprising that 96% of the world’s population speaks only 4% of the world’s languages.

While on the surface it seems logical to learn a language that is ‘useful’, this attitude is endemic to the extinction of languages. It does not recognise the value behind learning and speaking the languages of one’s ancestors and continuing traditions that have lasted centuries, simply because it is not considered economically beneficial. Engaging with one’s own culture and using the language of one’s community are portrayed as less valuable and secondary to learning what is ‘useful’. The ancient and intangible cultural traditions that show centuries of human experience become less of a concern in the face of temporary economic factors.

In order to keep these languages alive, they need to be transmitted to younger generations. Moreover, people from outside of the community need to learn these languages. Crucially, it is important to instil a renewed awareness of the beauty and importance of every language, whether it has 250 million speakers or just twenty.

Let’s return to the question of “Why?”. It would seem that if people question why one should learn Portuguese, one of the world’s most widely spoken languages, there is little hope that enough people will want to ensure the survival of those most endangered. However, hope is not lost. There are people, including grammarians, who are learning and writing grammars for languages that are critically endangered, so as not to lose the valuable cultures to which they belong. Online resources are vital to raising awareness and assisting the learning of languages like Cherokee, Cornish or Wiradjuri, that are struggling in an ever-globalised world.

For those interested in learning about endangered languages, this website is a useful tool: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com.

‘and all manner of things shall be well’

Jack Glynne-Jones
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‘and all manner of things shall be well’

During times like these, when one must spend more time alone and the mind is unsettled, it can be difficult to sit and focus on studying or reading for long periods, particularly when attempting continuous or difficult texts. Poetry, however, requires less sustained concentration and shifts the emphasis of importance towards single lines or short passages, rather than requiring the reading of a whole chapter in order to acquire meaning. It allows more time for ponderance and interpretation, encouraging the mind to drift, meditate and remember. It’s a different type of mental focus than required when following the narratives within novels, or attempting to navigate complex academic books or articles. 

There are certain poets whose words were written in, or about, isolation during unsettled times. One such poet is T.S. Eliot, whose life until he met his second wife Valerie was solitary, with years spent writing while working as a banker and editor in London. His year at Merton College was summarised with the words: ‘Oxford is very pretty, but I don’t like to be dead’. Two of his most famous works, The Wasteland and Four Quartets, were written after or during times of great uncertainty, the former published in 1922, when the horror of WW1 was firmly printed in living memory, and the latter in 1941. 

The Waste Land is bleak and offers little consolation, but the Four Quartets offer more optimism and hope while at the same time communicating his mental and physical isolation more clearly than any of his other works. The last three movements were written when London was being heavily bombed; something which Eliot observed in his time as an Air Raid Warden on the roof of the Faber & Faber publishing house in Russell Square. He fully acknowledges the war going on around him, referencing the Blitz using Christian imagery:
‘The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror’.
Nor was he afraid to realise the realities of time and death:
‘Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended,
Dust inbreathed was a house –
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.’ 

Yet, in taking on these challenges he nevertheless offers many lines of acceptance and hope, one of the most prominent being the Julian of Norwich quote: ‘And all things shall be well, And all manner of things shall be well’, found in the concluding passage of the final Quartet. The combination of this optimism with the abundance of references to his isolation (‘….the light falls, Across the open field, leaving the deep lane, Shuttered with branches’) can offer a new way of looking at one’s own time spent alone in times of stress or anxiety. Here we find an outlook where we see that temporary isolation can refresh our sympathy with others, and allow us to take our loved ones less for granted. Eliot even offers us solace for the future, when the difficult times have passed. In the opening stanzas of the Four Quartets he conveys the futility of regret
‘What might have been is an abstraction, Remaining a perpetual possibility, Only in a world of speculation.’ Eliot is here in uncharacteristically personal, empathetic and optimistic form, feelings of which were possibly borne out of the trauma of living during WW2.

Sometimes, when encountering challenges or dilemmas in the past, I have found that poetry can help me to relax and look at things in a more detached and meditative manner, due to the low level of solid and sustained concentration required to read it. Perhaps it can express things that sentences and paragraphs cannot. It may highlight to us things that we believe to be true yet sometimes fail to act on, such as the usefulness of occasional optimism. Eliot, not exactly known for accessibility, is one poet who can offer very simple advice in incredibly beautiful terms. His Four Quartets, and an awareness of the period of his life in which they were written, highlight the utility of temporary self-isolation and reminds us that all turbulent times will pass. It tells us that during such times we may see certain facts of life more clearly, as well as appreciating what we usually take for granted. I think that perhaps poetry’s greatest and most immediate effect is to make us see more beauty in less. The expression of these sentiments through the thought-provoking form of poetry makes his work a great source of consolation for some when experiencing anxiety or doubt, and I feel that poetry is something more of us should turn to when feeling unsettled and unable to relax.

The Unacknowledged Oppression of the Welsh language

Nia Brown
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The Unacknowledged Oppression of the Welsh language

The PR department of chocolate bar company Snickers recently made headlines for an ill-judged Twitter thread likening the Welsh language to “someone sitting on a keyboard”. In a move made mere days after Sky News were criticised for branding the Welsh language as “pointless”, these ‘jokes’, while seemingly trivial compared to other ‘more pressing’ issues in the world, seem characteristic of the bigoted mantle of anti-welsh Cymrophobia that is apparently allowed to pass as acceptable in our current society.

During my first week at university I was reliably informed by an Englishman, who I’m not convinced had ever stepped foot in Wales, that my language was “going to die soon anyway” (thank goodness for such valuable insight). I rolled my eyes and dismissed the comment…just as I dismissed Roger Lewis who branded Welsh as a ‘Moribund monkey language’, and Rod Liddle who viewed the language as “indecipherable with no real vowels”, and just as I dismissed the letter that appeared in my local newspaper characterising my home town as a “unique, successful and a special town because it has always been very un-Welsh”. Most often such comments are, much like the Snickers’ tweet, justified as “just a joke”, cheap, boring and repetitive as they may be. However such jokes often become weary and exasperating when the people and culture they deride have endured a debilitating oppression.

These ‘jokes’ are microaggressions, and they appear to stem from a broader and outdated view that English should somehow assume superiority over Welsh. From the 1847 Treachery of the Blue Books, a government-commissioned report that condemned “the evil of the Welsh language” as “a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people”, to the nineteenth century ‘Welsh Not’, which physically punished schoolchildren for speaking Welsh, the Welsh language has been consistently and wrongly condemned as a taint on a cohesive and coherent Britain. Evidently, it is a narrative that needs updating.

The problem is that when such a dangerously elitist approach towards language is adopted, unique and valued cultural heritage is at stake. For example, Llyn Bochlwyd (translating as “Lake of the Greycheek”), is a lake in Snowdonia named after a local legend which tells of an old grey stag who, pursued by a hunter, leapt from a great height and swam to safety through the lake, holding its grey cheeks above the water. The Welsh name beautifully ties the land to its local lore. However in recent guidebooks Llyn Bochlwyd has been given a new name that is more pronounceable for non-Welsh speakers: Lake Australia…because its outline vaguely resembles the shape of Australia.

Thankfully the vast majority of people are enthusiastic about Wales and about Welsh culture. I loved being able to take a friend of mine for a walk along the Brecon Beacons and for it to be met with the same enthusiasm that I had always felt for such a beautiful landscape. However it’s important to remind ourselves that Wales is not simply an extension of England, nor is it here to accommodate it. Such a mistake has been made before with the drowning of Capel Celyn in 1965, despite great Welsh opposition. One of the few Welsh-only speaking communities was destroyed in order create a reservoir to supply water to Liverpool. It was an event which epitomised English indifference towards Welsh culture, opinion, and property that still leaves a tender wound today.

Snickers’ tweets may seem harmless enough at first, but they are a microcosm of a wider and more troubling trend of anti-welsh sentiments that breed from a place of ignorance. To reduce the Welsh language to a jumble of letters smashed on a keyboard is to buy into the same age-old mindset that devalues the Welsh language in favour of its more ‘sophisticated’ English neighbour.  The joke may be old, but the politics are older.

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