Saturday 2nd May 2026
Blog Page 696

TIG and the Lib Dems must join forces immediately

Oliver Besley
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TIG and the Lib Dems must join forces immediately

The debacle and decay of British politics is now nearly universally acknowledged. Brexit is offered as both a symptom and cause. The two major parties, captured by their extremes, offer meagre solutions. Labour appears to be a repeat of its 1970s self, whilst the Conservatives seem to have returned to the 1950s, both with a dollop of toxic post-truth added to the mix.

Those supporting an alternative can protest and petition, but the substantial currency of change is winning MPs at Westminster. Our voting system, first-past-the-post, makes it extraordinarily difficult for smaller parties to win representation and sustains the duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives.

As a third force in politics, the SDP-Liberal Alliance received over 25% of the popular vote in 1983. They received a totally uninfluential 3.5% of the seats in Westminster (only 23), a saving grace for both Labour and the Conservatives. Unsurprisingly, despite our ‘polarised’ times, the major parties are still agreed on keeping this voting system.

Consequently, if an election was held in which The Independent Group (TIG) and the Liberal Democrats competed it would be almost assured neither would increase their influence in Parliament. Indeed, in competing for similar voters, both might experience catastrophe to the benefit of the two major parties.

The bizarre tragedy of this would be the overwhelming and broad agreement between these groups on swathes of issues. In facing the immediate Brexit elephant, the policies and the voting of their MPs are indistinguishable. Yet their wider views of politics also appear to be extremely similar. The Independent Group’s statement of beliefs frankly threatens to spit out the Liberal slogan of ‘Stronger Economy, Fairer Society’.

Both groups share a strong commitment to using the market to improve social equity, to devolve power, to sensibly raise money to improve public services and education and to protect individual rights. I would also hope TIG will eventually match Liberal commitments to rehabilitation-focused reforms of the justice system (Britain has some of the worst re-offending rates in western Europe), an evidence-based approach to drugs and the pressing need for improved renter’s rights in the housing sector.

This is by no means intended to be a fatuous implication that The Independent Group is a mistaken venture and all involved should have joined the Liberal Democrats. TIG’s MPs are the type of direct and authentic individuals currently needed to lead and to stop the rot. They also offer a fresh organisation to attract new people and allow others to reconsider their politics.

Yet TIG also faces existential weaknesses. They severely lack a membership and campaign structure. This is not superficial. Knowledge of the system and grassroots campaigners are vital to translating support into hard votes. The Lib Dems have the knowledge, data structure and an experienced membership. TIG on its own would suffer substantially from this at its first elections. A scenario in which it wins 15% of the popular vote at a general election yet loses nearly all its MPs is highly possible and would probably be fatal.

Furthermore, the Lib Dems have swathes of radical policy based on a similar perspective to the Independent Group. Indeed, it seems implausible that the Independent Group, if it began to formulate substantial policies, would produce anything broadly at odds with Liberal stances.

The Lib Dems, whilst containing excellent Parliamentarians, have suffered hugely from a lack of an effective leader and communicator since it was gutted by the 2015 election. Furthermore, the Coalition years have left the party isolated from Labour-leaning voters. A merger would be a swift and effective remedy to both problems.

I miss (E)U

Marina Adami
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I miss (E)U

As an EU student, it’s not at all surprising that I am not a fan of Brexit. Along with many others on the continent, I deeply regret the UK’s decision to leave.

However, I am not writing to persuade you of my own not-so-original take on the political debate, as by now I’m sure we’ve all heard every possible argument, several times. Like me, I imagine you are all sick of Brexit chat – sick of attempting to keep up with the latest thing Theresa May, Jean-Claude Juncker, or Jeremy Corbyn has said, as well as the ocean of articles, commentaries, and (of course) memes produced, most of which become irrelevant after a couple of days due to some new development.

Not knowing what the outcome will be and still having so many options talked about this late in the Brexit process is confusing, frustrating, and stressful for everyone. If you only happen to have an EU passport, it is even more so. 

The most stressful part is, of course, the uncertainty. If I knew for sure what would happen, I could begin to prepare for it, but like everyone else I have no idea. Not only that, but the few assurances we were given also seem to be subject to last-minute changes.

Despite having the possibility of staying in Oxford for longer, I booked a flight home for the 27th of March, as I thought at the time that the UK would be leaving the EU on the 29th. I wanted to be home before then because I feared delays in travel, and it’s very important for my family that I join them for Easter. Even that small adjustment was in vain, as we all know.

Not knowing what will happen, not being able to take anything as a given, only increases the sense of powerlessness that I, and other EU students, inevitably feel. This is something for which we cannot plan or prepare. How could we, when we don’t know what will happen, nor when?

Despite this, I find myself constantly reading the news, listening to every statement Theresa May makes, and watching parliamentary debates as they happen. I continue searching for a hint of how the situation might be resolved, and, to my horror, I talk about it constantly. I confess I am guilty of repeatedly subjecting my friends to everyone’s least favourite conversation starter: “Have you heard what’s happening with Brexit?”

Meanwhile, back in mainland Europe, I am questioned about when I’ll be moving back. Everyone assumes I’ll have no wish to remain after my degree, due to the economic uncertainty and my lack of British citizenship.

Sadly, it’s not so easy to let go of a place you have made your home. On the other hand, my future plans do rely very heavily on the outcomes of Brexit, which makes me reluctant to even think about what I might do. This is another way it’s very difficult to make any decisions: I don’t want to commit to staying in the UK, but neither do I wish to commit to leaving it. (Sound familiar?)

Brexit isn’t an insurmountable problem, but it is yet another thing to worry about, which in the stress of Oxford terms I could easily do without. I’ve been finding it very difficult to both keep on top of the latest developments and simultaneously do a degree, and there are plenty of things I would rather do after handing in an essay than to try to understand what the day’s events, talks and decisions could mean for my future.

Moreover, I noticed that on days when something especially important would be decided, such as the three times the government voted on the Prime Minister’s deal, I had some trouble concentrating on my reading rather than speculating about what might happen next and checking if the votes had been cast yet. It’s hard to think of something else when I know that anything decided will tangibly, and almost immediately, affect me.

It’s also very easy to be overly dramatic. Whatever does happen, I know that I will be able to re-enter the country at the end of this vac, I know that I will be able to finish my studies, I know that my fees will remain the same to the end of my degree. I have the possibility to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme, which would allow me to continue living in the UK even after the Brexit dust has settled.

Alternatively, I do have another option – I can return to the EU. Brexit is irritating and stressful, but it is by no means the end of the world. After all, I knew the outcome of the referendum when I applied to study in the UK. I knew Brexit would happen while I was at university. What I could not have predicted was that the process would be such an unpredictable mess.

The Magic of Madeline Miller’s ‘Circe’

Jenny Scoones
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The Magic of Madeline Miller’s ‘Circe’

Content warning: This article contains a mention of rape and discussion of trauma.

As a reader I have always been suspicious of happy endings. What can a book do, when in real life those endings will inevitably fall apart? I have worried about sadness in novels. A friend of mine once said of Jean Rhys’ Good Morning Midnight, an unrelentingly miserable book, that they didn’t see how it helped anyone. It only meant that whoever read it was made miserable too. Yet, I think it is precisely the sadness of Madeline Miller’s second novel, Circe, that makes it the masterpiece it is.

A re-telling of the life of the Greek goddess Circe, most famous for hosting Odysseus on her island on his long journey home from the Trojan War, the novel is as captivating as it is tender. Released in paperback on the 1st of April, it is a tour de force in the art of writing struggle, and reading it becomes, under Miller’s protective spell, an act of healing. The narrative thrust of the novel is essentially that of a Bildungsroman, and within that tradition Circe seems a Grecian equivalent of Jane Eyre. Indignant and passionate, she begins the novel a child wronged by her family and made to feel an outcast.

This culminates in her exile to the island Aiaia, where she is sentenced to live out her eternity alone. Circe, like Jane, has herself to fall back on, and though she faces moments of despair, she finds solace in her pharmika, her witchcraft. Miller presents her spell-work so that it seems an allegory for the act of writing. Through her magic Circe learns that she can ‘bend the world to [her] will’. Spells seem more like poems, ‘each […]  a mountain to be climbed anew’, and thus her self-determination becomes an act of self-writing, and writing an act of magic.

She is not alone for long, however, as soon visitors come knocking at her door – some more welcome than others. Circe falls in love, is raped, bears a child, and falls in love again, and each twist in her tale is handled by Miller with an acute awareness of the trauma and the beauty of pain. 

Later in the novel, Circe observes her sister’s daughter, Ariadne, as she dances, beautiful and ignorant of suffering . She stops herself before she has the chance to say what she is thinking; ‘Whatever you do […] do not be too happy. It will bring down fire on your head.’ The passage comes as a moment of revelation. This is the danger of a happy ending laid bare. When reality fails you, as it does Circe countless times over, happiness is held up by circumstance, and likely to give at any moment. For Miller, and for Circe, happiness is an unstable thing, ever prone to disappoint and leave one lost in its wake. Sadness, and finding beauty in it, thus becomes a matter of survival. Hope, too, is dangerous for Circe. 

Yet it is Circe’s perspective as reluctant goddess that most truly charges the novel with its mournful air. Her immortality looms over the novel, not as a blessing, but a curse, making beauty seem transient and pain ever-lasting. Her first love, Glaucos, whom she transforms into a God only for him to choose another in her stead, leaves her with a pain as ‘sharp and as fierce as a blade through [her] chest’. ‘I thought I would die of such pain,’ she says, ‘But of course I could not die’, and it is therein that Circe’s tragedy, for much of the novel, lies. Death becomes sweet when it is the alternative to an eternity of suffering.

Similarly, her second love Daedalus, a mortal, is as soon lost to her as found, her memories of him being all ‘made of air’ and thus doomed to blow away from her like smoke on the night air. In her rendering of immortality Miller thus paradoxically captures the very essence of what it is to feel the pain of a mortal life, where all sorrow seems ever-lasting and all happiness wilts before it is fully bloomed. The immensity of immortality becomes a reflection of the intensity of mortality. It is an ingenious play on the subject matter, making the plight of an ancient goddess seem urgent and present. 

The novel is charged with imagery so startling and rich that it seems to colour the pages like a potion, dripping from line to line, oozing between them and giving them their potency. Startling similes abound, so exacting and lucid it is as if they are conjured from the subconscious, and have always been there. Miller’s is a voice preoccupied with the beauty of language, how it can be worked and re-formed into new and startling shapes. In this way, she is as much a worker of magic as Circe. As Daedalus, Circe’s lover, works beauty from a block of stone, so Miller transforms the language at her disposal into dazzling designs. A master of her craft, she is at the height of her powers. It is rare that such an intricately aestheticized prose-style remains consistent throughout, yet Miller never wavers. Always, she has one eye on the narrative, the other on its detail, and as a reader one feels always in safe, certain hands. 

Miller’s virtuosic yet ever-generous presence is this book’s greatest strength, and nowhere is it more greatly felt than in its final pages. In love again, and with a transformative potion to her lips, Circe conjures a vision of what she hopes the potion will grant her – a mortal life. It is not an especially happy one. In her vision she has grown old with Odysseys’ son, Telemachus, and she imagines he tells her ‘it will be alright’:

It is not the saying of an oracle or prophet. They are words you might speak to a child […] and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only: that we are here.

Thus, Miller gifts her reader an important lesson. That nothing is so sad that it does not deserve to be made beautiful. That making it beautiful is the only way to survive the sadness. That fear and pain and trauma cannot be escaped, or avoided. That confronting them as Miller does, and as the reader must in the novel, is the only way. Only through this, she suggests, can we know we are truly here, and be comfortable in the knowledge. Circe is thus a life-affirming testament to the healing power of feeling everything there is to feel unconditionally in beauty’s name. 

Spoons? Spoons.

Ellie Greaves
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Spoons? Spoons.

When tasked with uncovering the insatiable allure of the Wetherspoons chain, commonly dubbed “Spoons”, to the student populace, one must immediately consider its practicality before questioning whether there is something else afoot.  

Is Spoons so popular merely because of the relatively cheap food and, more importantly, drink? Is it something utilised solely as an inexpensive method of “getting smashed” on a Friday night? I don’t think it’s as simple as that.

When you really get down to it, there is something different about Spoons compared to other, maybe in some cases even cheaper, chains. The camaraderie of a group of students heading to Spoons for a cheeky night out, whether it be three people or fifteen, is like no other, making Spoons, for me at least, entirely unique to the other pubs littering Oxford. 

There is something inherently “un-Oxford” about Wetherspoons, whether it be the slightly fancier “Swan & Castle” or the good old “Four Candles”, and herein lies the appeal. Engrossed in the “Oxford Bubble” of constant deadlines coupled with pomp entirely unique to this university, I feel there is much to be said for something familiar, a piece of home, a touch of normality and this is exactly what can be found in Spoons.

Whether someone finds comfort in the ever-changing table organisation catered for groups of any size or just the overall informality of the somewhat dated setting, Spoons encompasses the classic “pub” atmosphere, akin to that which students might find at home.

That commonality stretches across the North-South divide (the Midlands are a myth) and captures the hearts of international students experiencing their first glimpse into the UK’s drinking culture (God help them).

Therefore, we must ask ourselves, for something so entirely un-Oxford, how and where does Spoons actually fit into Oxford’s drinking culture? If any of you have looked closely at the pubs on that random postcard/poster at your respective Fresher’s fairs, you’ll know that:

1. Oxford has a lot of pubs…like a lot, and

2. Each individual establishment has its own feel (and price list) that attracts different people. The Bear, the Crown, the Head of the River, the King’s Arms (you can tell I’m at a central college), each possesses something entirely unique.

So where does Spoons fit in? It is a truth universally acknowledged that any good student pub crawl ends at a Spoons and this is because its uniqueness entirely depends on its ability to cater for everyone and make all feel welcome, including non-drinkers.  

Instead of being cast aside and barred from ever seeing the dim lights of the (aptly named) Four Candles, for those who don’t drink it’s as good as place as any for a bit of chat with your mates with some pretty decent food.

As a quick note, it’s also a laugh to order your friends random things on the app (eg. a bowl of peas) whether they drink or not. The app also prevents people exercising un-Spoonsmanlike conduct, attempting to steal your highly sought-after seat as you innocently journey to the bar, instead allowing you to chill in your seat and have a plethora of pitchers (no glasses please, just a straw) brought to you.

But, hold on – is there a chance I could be entirely wrong? Is Spoons, in reality, just a cheap pub that has, simply by luck, struck the hearts of students not only in Oxford, but in the UK as a whole? Or are we all just unimaginative sheep following along with what we know in the detrimental spiral of the aforementioned student drinking culture? Depressing thoughts really…

I’d like to think there’s something just a bit magical about Spoons, something they’ve tapped into that no other chain or individual pub really has. It holds a special place in my heart (and not because I got kicked out after spitting whiskey across a table).

As someone who simply cannot stand the claustrophobic sweat rooms that are clubs, Spoons blends the casual, “getting together with friends and having a few laughs”, and the, “actually going out in public and being sociable with people instead of sitting in your room drinking alone”, seamlessly and so, all I really have left to say is, anyone for a pint?

This year’s NUS conference – how your delegates voted

Sam Millward
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This year’s NUS conference – how your delegates voted

The National Union of Student’s annual conference took place between Tuesday and Friday of this week. Five of Oxford’s seven elected delegates were present and voting in Glasgow, with two not voting on any motions.

The voting records of all delegates are available for viewing online, whilst a list of the motions discussed over the three day event can be found here.

This conference saw the election of Zamzam Ibrahim as NUS President. Ibrahim, the former president of the Salford University students’ union, vowed in her manifesto to hold a National Student Strike, calling for free education, an improved student maintenance allowance and the return of the post-study work visa for overseas students.

Among the motions discussed, Oxford SU delegates voted to support the Mental Health Charter. This would seek to improve standards of mental health provision and funding across universities, acknowledging alarming rates of student suicide and the ongoing “mental health crisis”.

All Oxford delegates voted against the motion to revoke gender quotas within the SU. The proposer highlighted the now-increased presence of women in the organisation, since the rule’s creation in 2014, as well as the potential harm to non- binary individuals that a 50% female quota poses. The last 5 NUS presidents have identified as female, with racial discrimination featuring more often than gender inequality in this year’s manifestoes.

The conference itself was marked from the outset by sitting president Shakira Martin’s admission of the NUS’s financial trouble. Telling the conference that “we should have run out of cash”, Martin stated: “We are having problems that we need to sort out”.

This follows the November announcement that the NUS was unable to pay off a £3m deficit, cutting half of its jobs as a result. However, all Oxford delegates voted against a review of the NUS’s finances.

Closer to home, Oxford SU is continuing the hunt for a VP for Charities and Community, a position unfilled by Hilary term’s election. President Joe Inwood also penned a letter this month, calling for the university to revoke the honorary degree given to the Sultan of Brunei.

Oxford SU has been contacted for comment on the proceedings.

Homesick

Chloe Jacobs
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Homesick

Content warning: this article contains discussion of anxiety and panic attacks which some readers may find distressing.

It’s the Easter vacation of 2018. I am standing in my sister’s bedroom. I am exhausted, trying to decipher whether the bags of glass pebbles under her bed are the product of hoarding or if they had some invisible sentimental value. I stare at them for five minutes. I sigh and throw them away. I move on to the next bizarre item, a broken ukulele she once talked about turning into a bird house. 

My family were evicted from our house part-way through my first year at Oxford. I was trying to balance revising for collections and packing all of our possessions into a storage unit. One of the more unexpected lessons I learned from the process was that “Home”, a place with so many meaningful connotations of family, security, love, is also a practical term for “place where you can leave all of the stuff that you’re not ready to make hard decisions about keeping or discarding”. I threw away so much the week we moved out. Toys, knick-knacks, old notebooks full of my fourteen-year-old angst, childish books I knew I would never read again. I was brutal, unflinching, ruthless, staring unfeelingly into the pleading plastic eyes of every one of my stuffed toy victims. I knew that, if I didn’t take them, I would have to take up precious space in our one and only storage unit, or take them with me to Oxford, unpacking and repacking them every eight weeks.

“Home” had always been a somewhat fraught term for me. It meant, at various points, arguing parents, love, telling friends at primary school that today was the day I was going to run away from home in a melodramatic preteen whisper, comfort, divorced parents, safety, frayed mental health, the familiar warmth of tradition, teen angst and an intense desire to be that wonderful and elusive thing, independent. I spent a long time running away, a long time hiding. Then, all of a sudden, it was gone. The oppressive security evaporated. The walls that I had fought so long to escape suddenly disappeared, and I was free-falling. I began living out of suitcases. 

A year on, my family have been happily resettled. Their council house is spacious enough, and homey, but, despite all of my mother’s best efforts, I don’t have a bedroom there. My younger sister, finishing her A-Levels, and younger brother, only ten, needed the available rooms far more than I did, and I am exceptionally grateful for the large, blue pull-out sofa that allows me to visit, allows us to all be together. It is a struggle, sleeping in the middle of everyone else’s space, being acutely aware every time I pack my suitcase at the end of term that I will be living out of it until Uni recommences, but we make it work as best we can. My mother bought me curtains to help me make the space my own, which made it much easier to change clothes and find moments of privacy, but still made the hyperventilation common to my panic attacks hard to disguise. 

My college has allowed me to stay this vacation, and it has made a huge difference. Yes, I still had to move my worldly possessions, but only across a quad. I can close my door when the world seems hostile, I can sleep late when my body is tired, I can try to tackle my lengthy vacation reading list in relative quiet, close to a million libraries. It gives me control. It gives me focus. It gives me a place to keep all my weird stuff; the four baby-dolls, the lamp that says “PARTY”, the giant plastic Marmite jar, the slow-cooker that my aunt gave me for Christmas. 

Ultimately, home means so many things, but it seems to me to be, in essence, more of a feeling or state of being than a place. I feel at home having a familiar meal with my family, or singing the same twelve songs we’ve karaoke-d since I was 10 on New Year’s Eve, or watching a terrible rom-com with my mom and sister. I feel at home watching vine compilations with my friends, or studying opposite them for several silent hours in a Costa in Scunthorpe, or eating a surprise Carbonara they’ve made me for my birthday. I am an improvisor and a stand-up comedian, and I feel at home on stage, inventing and imagining and generating laughter from a gathering of strangers who have decided to trust me and have fun with me. I feel at home anywhere there is an Oxford Imp. I feel at home watching TV with my boyfriend, or cooking together, or when he books me a doctor’s appointment because I am too anxious to make a phone call. 

Home is a feeling of control and safety, a sense of contentment and quiet, peaceful joy. I lost a physical space, a place touched and filled by people that I love and a stable base that gave me security, but I did not lose home. I have experienced home in ancient libraries, doctor’s waiting rooms, in college, in Slough, on Oriel 3rd Quad lawn at the height of summer, in Scunthorpe, at a Toby Carvery, on a helter-skelter slide, in Portugal, at the Globe theatre, mid-essay crisis, in the dining hall, in Edinburgh, at the movies, in Christ Church Meadows, in the middle of a panic attack, in Portugal, in Nandos…behind the closed door of my quiet, dark bedroom, listening to a rain hitting the window. 

In the UK, the charity YoungMinds offers help and further support with some of the issues raised in this article. In the UK and Irish Republic, contact Samaritans on 116 123 or email [email protected].

Review: Edward II – ‘fantastic at handling themes of homosexuality and power’

Basil Bowdler
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Review: Edward II – ‘fantastic at handling themes of homosexuality and power’

The simultaneous running of Shakespeare’s Richard II and Marlowe’s Edward II, both at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, throws up some interesting comparisons. Written within a year of one another, both plays tell the tale of unfit kings who are overthrown, sending all into terrifying chaos. Yet, whilst Shakespeare’s Richard is a king whose arrogance and arbitrary behaviour bring about his downfall, Marlowe’s Edward is undone by his steadfast commitment to his lover, the incompetent and widely despised Piers Gaveston.

Indeed, Nick Bagnall’s production does a fantastic job of casting Edward in a sympathetic light. Much like the real-life Edward II, Marlowe’s Edward – here played with terrific vulnerability and melancholy by Tom Stuart – is a man whose only crimes seem to be being born into the wrong role and in an age where his sexuality was neither understood nor tolerated. In a striking opening scene, amidst booming music and unsettling funeral chants from hooded monks as the corpse of his father is carried out, Edward anxiously searches the audience for anyone to alleviate his burden or take his place, yet finds no one.

One of the production’s greatest successes is in highlighting just how alone Edward is: alienated from his wife by his sexuality and suspicions of her fidelity, and from his lords by his inept rule. There’s also a wonderful ambivalence to Beru Tessema’s performance as Gaveston, between cynical exploitation and committed passion, that leaves the audience in doubt as to his motives. Later on, when kissed by Edward in a moment of passion, the king’s new favourite, the Young Spencer, is simply frozen, the love seemingly unrequited.

The rebellious lords are played with a wonderful pomp and impatience, especially Richard Cant as the Earl of Lancaster and Colin Ryan’s brief – but hilarious – performance as an aloof bishop, which provides some well-timed comic relief but never crosses the line into farce. Yet there’s a physicality and menace to their collective mass, in particular the brooding but combustible energy that Jonathan Livingstone brings to Mortimer, as opposed to the diminishing presence of Stuart’s Edward that heightens the tension and conflict here. 

One of the pleasures of seeing any production at the Sam Wanamaker will always be the physicality and intimacy of the space and Bagnall does a great job at exploiting it. Magnificent set-pieces like the opening funeral scene or the coronation of the young and insecure Edward III overawe the audience, who are also kept looking over their shoulders by sudden entrances from the characters through their midst. The musical backing is used sparingly to colour the tone of the scenes yet never distracts from the action. The eerie sound of waves as Edward is lulled to sleep by his assassin then gives way to a stark silence as the deposed king is brutally murdered: naked on a stage lit by a single flickering candle.

Inevitably, in attempting to condense more than twenty years of event-filled history into two hours, there are points where Marlowe hurries through moments of real dramatic power. The offstage execution of Lancaster, hereto the main rival of Edward II, is so discreetly handled that the audience could be forgiven for thinking that Marlowe and the director have simply forgotten about him. There’s also some multi-roling which proves confusing for any who drift off: Colin Ryan plays three parts, two of whom, the Young Spencer and Edward III (hardly insignificant characters), appear on stage almost immediately after one another.

The defections of Edward’s queen and his brother, the Earl of Kent, are given little explanation or space for the audience to absorb their enormity. Similarly, the epilogue after Edward’s death, with Edward III ordering the execution of Mortimer and the imprisonment of his mother, simply overburdens a play already over-loaded with plot. Either that or something about modern attention spans…

Yet these are minor quibbles in a production that otherwise does a fantastic job at handling sixteenth century themes of homosexuality and power, in ways that still move and don’t feel out of place in the twenty-first.

‘What it means to be a cornerstone’: life at an all girls’ school

Lois Heslop
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‘What it means to be a cornerstone’: life at an all girls’ school

“May our daughters be the polished cornerstones of the temple” was the motto of my all-girls day school, situated in ‘Made in Chelsea’ country and frequently featured in Tatler magazine. It’s a funny motto, old fashioned and seemingly bearing very little relation to the education of young women in the 1880s but having read it more carefully I think I see what our founder was getting at. Cornerstones are the foundations of the building; the first stone laid down, breaking into previously unmarked earth. And I think this was in the spirit of a school which came out of the Victorian push for women’s education; feminism was even on our curriculum.

Surprisingly, we latched onto this motto and on our last day of school – fondly known in much of the Independent school sector as “muck-up” day, where the girls wreak well intended havoc on the school – a particularly creative student created badges for all of us reading “Once a Cornerstone, Always a Cornerstone”. It’s an obvious symbol of the privilege that we had to trash the school for fun, when many schools around the country are struggling for basic supplies and teaching staff, and the trust that the school had in 50 or so school girls not to blow the place up. In fact, it did go rather wrong as the school had foolishly scheduled multiple tours for prospective parents on that day, and they were rather surprised to see our “art installation” on the main stairs as they came into the building, which included silly string, bunting, and a selection of our finest lacy underwear adorning the entrance hall. 

Going to an all-girls school did present a number of unique issues not faced by our co-ed counterparts. The question I get asked most by people who went to mixed schools is “how did I meet boys?”, and to be fair it’s a very good question. Unless you got lucky and had a brother who could conjure up some friends, the main way of meeting boys were at the sterile and heavily supervised school socials. 

In my first two years of secondary school we had the universal girls school experience of school discos with a neighbouring boys’ school. For much of the night it was girls on one side of the room and boys on the other, but once some brave souls crossed no-mans-land, the rest of the night constituted a competition over who could achieve the most BBM names (the coolest phone to have was a BlackBerry). I was small for a Year 7 girl, being a year ahead of my age group, and not as physically developed as some of the others (this seems like nature’s little joke, as I’m now 6’0”), so I never won, but gossiping in the locker room at the late hour of 9pm, which smelled of Victoria’s Secret body spray, was fun nonetheless. 

When I got to be 13, the school had a radical shakeup of the socials format and adopted a practice from the boys’ Public Schools; reeling. Reeling is a type of Scottish Ceilidh dancing, but we danced the posh Anglicanised version; it’s much less rowdy and raucous that its actual Scottish counterpart. Much more English. The practice is often carried into the adult lives of those who learn it at school; this is the reason that Caledonian Balls tend to have a larger population of red trouser wearers and people who bank with Coutts than you know… Scottish people. 

When it came to Year 11, many of the girls decided to leave for boarding school or to go to a mixed school for sixth form. I was one of the ones who decided to stay on and complete the full seven years at a single-sex school. I did so partly because at this point I knew I wanted to study science. At the mixed schools near me I realised I would be the only girl in the further maths class, and I didn’t feel prepared enough to be sure of standing my ground against louder, more confident boys. Physics at Oxford is one of the most male-dominated subjects, with under 20% women, and in fact I had only one female lecturer last term. What my all-girls school gave me was a safe environment within which I could flourish, building my self-confidence and providing important mentoring and encouragement to pursue STEM, despite the massive gender imbalance in further education. It makes sense that girls school alumni are 6 times more likely to consider applying for STEM courses compared to girls who attend co-ed schools.

One anonymous review described the school as a “holding pen for ridiculously wealthy and perennially stupid future “it” girls”. While I’m feeling a bit perennially stupid at the moment, facing exams, I wholeheartedly disagree. My school imparted in us the spirit of the cornerstone, of those original 14 young women who crossed the threshold in 1881, those pioneers of girls’ education. What that little school produced was hard-working and conscientious girls with a fiercely feminist dialectic, aware of their significant privilege, and a certain ability to weather the storms to come. 

And you thought it’s bad over here…

Dorothy McDowell
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And you thought it’s bad over here…

Hello England, it’s Northern Ireland. I’m just dropping you a line because I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to be very angry about your education system. After an (admittedly cursory) inspection of the evidence, I would say that this anger is justified (why do your posh people get different schools? Do you know it’s not normal to play lacrosse?). You seem to be aware that your bit of the country divides children by wealth and that it’s a bit weird. So I thought you might like to know that my bit divides children by religion, and it’s even weirder. Basically, we decided that it was a really good idea to have separate schools for Catholics and Protestants – and I hope that raises some questions for you, because let me tell you, I have some answers:

Q. How does that work?

A. The three most common types of school in Northern Ireland are: controlled, catholic maintained and integrated. All of them are funded by the state, all of them are free to attend, and all of them exist at both primary (might as well start ’em young) and secondary level. Catholic maintained schools were founded by the Catholic church amid (pretty reasonable) fears that the then Protestant-Unionist government would discriminate against Catholic pupils. Controlled schools are government run state schools, originally controlled by the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian or Methodist churches, who transferred them to the government in exchange for church representatives being allowed to sit on their Boards. They are technically non-denominational but in practice are mostly attended by Protestants. Integrated schools actually are non-denominational but aren’t very widely attended, partly because they are non-selective, unlike the controlled and maintained sectors which still run on a grammar/secondary system. Got it? Good.

Q. But it’s not like the government’s forcing people to go to separate schools?

A. No, fair enough, they aren’t – and a lot of money does go into integrated education. But at the last election only one of the main parties said they wanted a single education system; the rest were content with the staus-quo. This is where I have to be careful because (spoiler alert) I’m Protestant, so can’t really get high and mighty about an education system set up to protect Catholics from discrimination. What I would quite like, however, is for the government to put a bit of effort into creating a society where Protestants and Catholics discriminating against each other is a little less likely – but unfortunately they collapsed over a row about woodchips in 2016 and we are apparently meant to…. talk amongst ourselves (?) until they decide to reconvene.

Q. So, did you go to one of these schools?

A. I did indeed – controlled grammar in a rural market-town; teaching staff ranging from outstanding to slightly unhinged; within easy walking distance of a Lidl (35p cookies, can’t recommend highly enough).

Q. So how did it aid religious intolerance?

A. The split school system doesn’t cause intolerance so much as not do anything to prevent it. So, while your average controlled school may not go round extolling the virtues of the Reformation, in creating a space containing only Protestants it: 1) perpetuates the idea that they are somehow different from Catholics. 2) allows its pupils to express whatever prejudices they may be picking up at home with relative impunity.

Q. These Catholics, did you ever….. see any of them?

A. Yes, I did – indeed towards the end of my school career I was even allowed to go among them, in order to receive lessons in A Level Government and Politics which my school could not, apparently, give themselves. Findings as a result of this daring experiment were: 1) The Catholic school had a graveyard in the middle of it, which was officially decreed. Weird. 2) On paper, I sound like I’m going to be “very orange” but I am, in fact, “alright”. 3) The Catholic pupils could excuse themselves from being late to class by saying that they were in the chapel praying, which remains the best excuse I have ever heard.

Q. What single incident best sums up how… unique… your school experience was?

A. That would probably be when, aged seven, I was assigned a Catholic pen-pal. Not a French Catholic pen-pal or an Italian Catholic pen-pal but a Northern Irish Catholic pen-pal who went to a school ten minutes down the road, who I was instructed to write to in order to facilitate cross-community relations. The fact that most seven year olds do not know whether they are Catholic or Protestant or what that might mean had, apparently, not occurred to anyone.

Q. So, are we supposed to believe that this whole experience has left you terribly scarred?

A. Not really, no; I get a bit jumpy when I have to talk about Catholicism in case I offend someone by accident, but I don’t know that Freud could get much mileage out of that. For the effect on our national consciousness, however, I would point you towards a child in my primary school who did not wish to meet any Catholics in case they were “witches”. Perpetuating historic prejudice, is perhaps the most concise description.

Q. Have you finished?

A. Yes, I think I have. But please remember: part of the country most of you live in essentially segregates four year olds by religion. And it’s a bit messed up.

Van Gogh and Britain

Iona Rangeley-Wilson
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Van Gogh and Britain

“I often felt low in England…but the Black and White and Dickens, are things that make up for it all,” wrote Vincent van Gogh in 1883. The ‘Van Gogh and Britain’ exhibition at the Tate Britain contains many of Van Gogh’s earlier paintings and sketches, which do feel rather Dickensian in their stern monochromatic tones, miserable without the addition of his famous colour.

Van Gogh lived in London on and off between the spring of 1873 and the winter of 1876. Only three small sketches survive from this time. For this reason, the ‘Van Gogh and Britain’ title seems strange, after all, he had not yet started painting when he lived here. However, the central premise of the exhibition remains his influence on and by British art.

The positioning of the paintings is structured to illustrate this: a Van Gogh might be followed by paintings it influenced – like his Shoes and William Nicholson’s Miss Jekyll’s Gardening Boots – or preceded by paintings Van Gogh knew and loved, and which later inspired him. For example, one painting which caught his eye is James Whistler’s Nocturne: Grey and Gold Westminster Bridge (1871-1872), as well as Gustave Doré’s Evening on the Thames (1872). Both are presented alongside Van Gogh’s 1888 Starry Night Over the Rhone. The compositional influence is clear, as is the shared atmosphere of twilight above a still, quiet city river. The two earlier paintings are darker, colder images of Van Gogh’s – photo negatives, almost. By comparison, Starry Night is shot through with colour and romance.

The Van Gogh originals could probably fit into just two or three of the rooms here. The ticket is certainly worth it to be in the same room as Shoes, Starry Night, Sunflowers – if you can push past the crowds enough to properly see, these are as astounding as anyone might expect – but there are far more Van Gogh rip-offs and dark sketches than the huge canvases of swirling colour one might naively hope for. But what the exhibition does provide is a brilliant unfolding narrative: there is scarcely a decade between his early chalk drawings and the bright, giddying brush-marks of his later, most renowned paintings – the majority of which were produced in the two years before he – allegedly – killed himself, aged thirty-seven.

One could perhaps argue that viewing Van Gogh through his relationship with Britain is a little blinkered or reductive, but as the Guardian points out, different exhibitions have already explored his more obvious influences: “Other shows have argued the case for French Impressionism, Japanese prints, the paintings of Rembrandt or Jean-Francois Millet with considerably more success, for the simple reason that these influences are plain to see.” British influence might be smaller, less plain to see, but if it exists then there is no reason not to explore it – the exhibition doesn’t try to deny alternate influences, but simply applies a new, surprising lens to the accepted index of Van Gogh’s inspiration.

Van Gogh loved Dickens, and immediately the exhibition points out his admiration for what he called the “reality more real than reality” of Victorian novels. A row of leather-bound old books that he might have read sits opposite his first painting. “My whole life is aimed at making the things from everyday life that Dickens describes.” That realness of reality seems to be what we see developed here: from the reality of his sad, darkly coloured portraits or avenues or landscapes, to the same subjects multiplied by the colour and the swirling, living brushstrokes he is so well-known for – the added, more real reality of emotion and spirit. Prisoners Exercising, from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, is described by curators as Van Gogh’s only painting of London, made after a print of Newgate Prison by Dore. His feelings of physical and mental entrapment are clear, but the painting is astoundingly bright: ‘a redemptive vision of hell.’

One quotation, highlighted and blown up large on the wall of the exhibition, is by Oskar Kokoschka in Van Gogh’s Influence on Modern Painting: “This artist did face the reality of existence, however disconcerting, rather than close his eyes before the tragic futility of inhuman life!” In the exhibition gift shop, a tin box of card Van Gogh quotes is on sale. The one displayed: “And still to feel the stars and the infinite, clearly, up there. Then life is almost magical, after all.”

The two quotations, though similar in tone, seem almost to oppose each other: one demands a harsh and brave acceptance of reality, and the other resolutely rejects the earthy for the magical, the celestial. It reminds me of Wilde’s Lord Darlington: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” And I think it is this collided contrast that the Van Gogh and Britain exhibition sees develop: acceptance of a very real reality – no matter how harsh and futile – but one that never once loses its sense of life and magic.

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