Netherhall Mag June 2011

netherhall news june 2011

making history how the historian’s craft has changed

contents Cover page: Titian’s Allegory of Prudence depicting the three ages of man, above which runs the Latin inscription, EX PRAETERITO / PRAESENS PRUDENTER AGIT / NE FUTURA ACTIONE DETURPET (‘From the experience of the past, the present acts prudently, lest it spoil future action’) (‘making history: on the craft and tools of the historian’, p.10).

CONTENT EDITOR Zubin Mistry MANAGING EDITOR, DESIGN & SETTING Luke Wilkinson IN-HOUSE CORRESPONDENT Simon Jared CONTRIBUTIONS AND ADVICE Peter Brown, Fr. Joseph Evans, Simon Jared, Andrei Serban, Philipp Wirtz, Piers Tattersall, Luke Wilkinson, Dilip Bassi, Simon Wickham-Smith, Neil Pickering, Paul Rodgers, Fr. Bernard Marsh

regular features editorial

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zubin mistry on a guilty pleasure

PHOTOGRAPHY Simon Jared CIRCULATION Netherhall News is sent by e-mail to current and past residents of Netherhall House. It is also available at http://www. nh.netherhall.org.uk/magazine/magazine.htm CONTACT US Would you like to be included in our mailing list, contribute to or express your opinion on Netherhall News? Write to: LUKE WILKINSON C/O NETHERHALL NEWS, NETHERHALL HOUSE, NUTLEY TERRACE, LONDON, NW3 5SA, U.K. or E-MAIL: alumni@nh.netherhall.org.uk DISCLAIMER All opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors concerned and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors of Netherhall News, of Netherhall House or of Opus Dei.

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director’s notes

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peter brown writes at the end of another bumper academic year in netherhall

deadline for next edition! please send in articles for publication in the august edition by July 10th. we are particularly keen to feature more news from former residents, so do get in touch!

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making history: on the craft and tools of the historian

live on full! die on empty!

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against genre prejudice in cinema

dear sir: a defence of nt live

crossing paths: the mongolian connection

22 20 24 living freedom decisively s univ 2011 music, beauty & the eternal welfare comes first s the new student politics obituaries s jean marc harel & michael farmer a year in pictures netherhall news 3

editorial zubin mistry on a guilty pleasure

S

ome addictions take a lifetime to shake off while others are mercifully seasonal. The BBC reality television contest, The Apprentice, is definitely of the latter sort. For a couple of months each year, I become unhealthily obsessed with a group of smartly dressed young men and women, who (with some exceptions) contrive to marry stratospherically arrogant business rhetoric with breathtaking displays of practical incompetence, all while speaking into their Blackberries on loudspeaker.

For those of you who don’t know it, the premise is fairly simple. A group of business aspirants compete to become the latest ‘apprentice’ to Lord Alan Sugar (previously known simply as ‘Sirallun’), the founder of electronics company Amstrad and the one-time chairman of Tottenham Hotspurs football club. (During his time as chairman, Sugar famously coined the phrase ‘Carlos Kickabouts’ to describe cynical foreigners who came to play football in England for high wages, though English players have thankfully managed to catch up with their foreign counterparts).

In each episode, the candidates are divided into teams, with one from each assigned or elected as project manager, in order to win a designated task. These tasks range from operating a London bus-tour to marketing new alcoholic drinks. In this year’s series, the prize is different. Instead of an ‘apprenticeship’ (and the fates of winning candidates in previous years is curiously difficult to track down), this year’s winner will become a business partner with Lord Sugar, receiving £250,000 to start up his or her own company. Presumably, the aim is to identify the contestant least likely to flitter away the money, which is far less straightforward than it sounds.

Now, what these tasks share in common is that they inevitably require some measure of common sense. But equally inevitably they give rise to thoughtless rushing around, a sorry morass of egos and overambitious flights of fancy that make Don Quixote look like a pragmatist. The team which makes the largest (or, usually, least unimpressive) profit wins and is treated to some pointless indulgence or other, while the losing team is sent away to agonise over where things went wrong before the project manager is asked to return to the boardroom with two chosen team-mates.

The three erstwhile team-mates slug it out desperately and plead for a stay of execution until Lord Sugar elects to fire one of them with a prod of his finger. And so on until one emerges triumphant before, it seems, receding into obscurity.

Only four episodes in, this year’s series has already served up some magnificently harebrained ideas. In one task, the teams were entrusted by the Savoy hotel to procure a range of items, from top hats to cloches, at the best possible prices. One team sensibly cut

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left: luckily father joe hasn’t been taking tips from sirallun...if he did the editorial team would be quaking in their apprentice boots!

costs by shopping in Mayfair, while another popped into ‘Top Hats Dry Cleaners’ on a grubby street in case these particular dry cleaners not only dry cleaned but also sold top hats. They didn’t.

Another week, assigned to create and market a new ‘app’ for smart phones, the team which came up with an app providing a not entirely essential service, namely annoying sounds (including the racket of a dog barking with an incongruous picture of an elephant appearing on the screen), somehow managed not to be the worse of the two. This is a common Apprentice scenario, incidentally, whereby one can be a winner and a loser simultaneously. The other team came up with a ‘local vocal’ app recreating unimaginatively stereotypical and borderline offensive regional British accents. Unsurprisingly, their inspired idea fared worse on the global market. The same episode also featured a sequence of criminal punning which should have, but didn’t, result in a mass firing: app-roximately, app-roaching, app-solutely and, of course, app-le.

The most recent episode saw the teams compete in selling beauty products and services in shopping centres and department stores.

The teams had to choose their locations and, with forethought, one team opted for a cramped single treatment room, in which members of the public were cajoled into the privilege of paying for a heated massage while an elderly lady had her hair done within an arm’s length. Even more astutely, the treatment room was conveniently situated three floors away from their product stand.

The appeal of The Apprentice lies in the spectacle of silliness, the strange jolts from arrogance to humiliation and, strangely, back to arrogance again. But, if it sounds like a farce, or perhaps a tragicomedy, my viewing experience is dreadfully serious. My sister and I watch each episode like devotees in a kind of ritual, discussing minutiae where appropriate and observing a hushed silence at the crucial boardroom scene when the desperate candidates with their heads on the block profess their entrepreneurial credentials, make unsubstantiated allusions to proven track records and, ultimately, sling as much mud as possible at their erstwhile teammates in the hope that something will stick. The most stunningly brilliant diversionary tactic of all is to take responsibility for one’s own bad ideas by demonstrating that it was, at root, someone else’s fault for going along with it.

The show is, of course, absurd. If I sound unduly harsh about the candidates – and, really, most of it is just accurate reportage – they are evidently complicit in the often ludicrous personas they are invited to project. Aired at various points are their audition videos. One candidate explains solemnly that she was personally tutored (in which subject she does not specify, though one presumes humility) by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, while another claimed that ‘Lord Sugar wouldn’t need to teach me anything because I already know it all’. Sadly, this latter candidate, who evidently did not need any tuition from spiritual leaders, has since been fired.

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Of course, what we watch is a carefully edited finished product which is meant to be as entertaining as possible. The candidates are ridiculous rather than contemptible. In between takes of the audition videos, I imagine most are giggling embarrassedly at their own pomposity. Carefully factoring in costs, calculating prices or considering suitable markets isn’t half as fun to watch as the consequences when teams fail to ask such simple questions.

The contrived nature of the show is strangely accentuated by a companion programme, The Apprentice: You’re Fired, in which the most recently fired candidate reminisces in the studio about his or her sad demise. More often than not, the hubristic persona gives way to a more amiable presence, though that, of course, is precisely what the You’re Fired programme is meant to do.

As addicted as I am, The Apprentice is like so much television insofar as it presents highly condensed caricatures – even if it does harmless but hardly edifying viewing material better than most. What distinguishes the finest documentaries from most of what’s on the box is not a lack of careful editing, but the fact that this careful editing communicates often surprising realities in individuals, events, and cultures. Fine examples abound. The award-winning Spellbound examined the young competitors in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The moving Sons of Perdition looked at the lives of teenagers exiled from their fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon community. And Thrilla in Manila is a deep look at the three boxing matches that took place between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Unlike some of the more familiar Ali hagiography, Thrilla in Manila concentrates more on the now-forgotten figure of Frazier as well as the personal clashes and uncomfortable racial politics that fuelled decades of animosity between the two men.

A well-known practitioner of documentaries that seek to humanise subjects, however odd or disconcerting, is Louis Theroux. For over a decade, the affable, slightly gawky Theroux has presented documentaries focussed upon people who are, in his words, ‘on the face of it, quite risible’. In his Weird Weekends programmes, Theroux immersed himself in various peculiar American subcultures in an effort to convey the often strange worlds of his subjects. He has visited survivalist refuges inhabited by patriots stockpiling on food in fear of imminent apocalypses, gone on confidence workshops with out-of-work actors looking for breaks on off-Broadway, discussed racial history with black nationalists, undergone minor liposuction in an attempt to understand the craze for cosmetic surgery and sat through uncomfortable barbecues with neo-Nazis smouldering at his refusal to reveal whether or not he is Jewish.

The tone of his documentaries has grown more serious over time. An earlier documentary saw Theroux training with wouldbe wrestlers in scenes which were frightening and farcical at the same time. In his more recent The City addicted to Crystal Meth, Theroux encountered meth addicts, and their poignant stories of personal and familial fragmentation. His later work has seen him examine the famous San Quentin prison, policing, gambling, the growing practice of parents medicating their young children for mental problems and ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers in the West Bank in Israel.

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What Theroux has retained, however, is the attempt to see the human in his subjects. He has a gift for building some kind of rapport with those he meets. The documentaries are engrossing because of the juxtaposition of the extreme alongside the banal, the glimpses of what normality entails for people who are damaged, dangerous or caught up in extraordinary circumstances.

This virtue can, of course, sail dangerously close to the wind.

In A Place for Paedophiles, Theroux was granted access to Coalinga State Hospital, California, where paedophiles receive treatment – and, without legal challenges, are effectively imprisoned – after their prison sentences have elapsed. Theroux’s documentary managed to reveal the inmates as deeply flawed, troubled but also troubling men, rather than monsters, without effacing the abhorrent nature of their crimes.

“Theroux’s documentaries are engrossing because of the juxtaposition of the extreme alongside the banal, the glimpses of what normality entails for people who are damaged, dangerous or caught up in extraordinary circumstances”

His latest documentary, Miami Mega Jail, has just aired and revisits the prison system. The first episode is a thoroughly dispiriting look at a Miami jailhouse for men awaiting trial for charges ranging from larceny to murder. Some of them have been effectively incarcerated for years as they wait for their cases to reach the courts. In cells housing up to a dozen inmates, a brutal code of violence governs relations within cells and the jail staff are powerless to address it in any meaningful way.

So much television is a guilty pleasure. The Apprentice is a prime example. Alongside the indulgence of guilty pleasures, programmes like Theroux’s are sources of altogether more significant displeasure. Yet both The Apprentice and Miami Mega Jail offer insights into being human, even if the former accomplishes this through caricature and the latter through a more empathetic gaze.

Theroux’s programmes incline us to look anew at people who are, to use his words again, ‘on the face of it, risible’, while Lord Sugar’s vehicle teaches us that people can often act arrogantly and incompetently, and be complicit in their own caricaturing...and that a whole host of other people, like me, enjoy watching it.

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director’ s notes peter brown writes at the end of another bumper academic year in netherhall

m

ost students in London don’t have teaching in the third term. The final term of the academic year seems mostly dedicated to exams and for that reason we have the ‘end of year’ dinner as soon the students return after Easter. This year the dinner, served beautifully as usual by the staff, was on Friday 6th May. It was a rather poignant evening as many popular residents who have been with us for some time will soon be leaving.

Sam Brawn, Miguel Donetch, Tony Robinson, Han Win, James Naylor, Oscar Alabau, Miguel Sunga and the irrepressible Kazak, Temirlan Shaikhutdinov, are all leaving after three years here.

Each has left his own mark on the house for which I am very grateful.

The highlight of the dinner however was the speech given by Prakarsh Singh. Not only is Prakarsh the unofficial leader of the Indian community in Netherhall but he is also Netherhall’s elder statesman in that he has been here longer than any other student.

He arrived in September 2005 to begin his PhD at LSE and has now completed it. In September he takes up a teaching post at Amherst College in Boston, USA. There I have no doubt he will enthuse young Americans about economics in the way he has enthused residents of Netherhall in so many get-togethers since he arrived here. Prakarsh is an apostle of economics and of India. He has an infectious enthusiasm and over the years he has taught us all something about his favourite subjects. His speech was very moving. He looked back on his stay here and the friends he has made. He sat down to tremendous applause, a sign of the affection in which he is held by his fellow residents.

May has been a month when we have had former residents very much in mind. Elsewhere in this magazine are obituaries for two former residents from the 1970s who died recently, Jean Marc Harel from Mauritius and Mike Farmer from England. My deepest sympathy goes to the families of both and especially to Jason Harel, the son of Jean Marc, who was a resident here from 19972006.

May was also the month when we were treated to an ‘evening with Sergio Maresca’. Sergio lived in Netherhall on and off from 1968 -1973. He now lives with his family in Australia where he has built up an international reputation as a motivational speaker. His visit was much anticipated because ever since this magazine started under the eyes of Zubin Mistry and the great Kevin Gouder some five years ago, no edition has been produced without Sergio giving us his thoughts on it. With that in mind Zubin and Luke Wilkinson joined us for dinner to finally meet the man behind the emails. Sergio quickly ascertained that all three were like-minded artists who suffered for their gifts. The evening itself was tremendous. Sergio is a man full of wisdom and he presents it in a highly amusing manner. We all had our favourite anec-

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dotes from his talk and all came away asking ourselves whether our ‘ladder is up against the correct wall’.

Whilst speaking of ‘Geezer’ (Luke), I would also like to congratulate him and Lorna on their recent engagement. We wish them a long and happy life together.

Finally, I am a well known as a fan of France and someone (usually) delighted to have French residents here! It is with joy that I can therefore announce that this year’s dinner for former French residents will take place in Paris on Friday 4th November. Please do try to make it. The arrangements as last year are - aperitif at Garnelles and dinner afterwards at La Poule au Pot. For more details please contact me: peterb@nh.netherhall.org.uk

“Prakarsh is an apostle of economics and of India. He has an infectious enthusiasm and over the years he has taught us all something about his favourite subjects” clockwise from below: residents gather for an end-of term photo on the roof garden; netherhall stalwart prakarsh singh; temirlan shaikhutdinov waves the kazak flag at the doorway of netherhall, his home for the last three years; residents in high spririts celebrate the end of another academic year after the formal dinner

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making history philipp wirtz on the craft and tools of the historian

‘H

istory? The British never remember it; the Irish never forget it.

The Russians never made it. And the Americans never learn from it.’ Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Recently, amid great media fanfare, Queen Elizabeth II visited the Republic of Ireland, the first visit of a British monarch to this land since its independence. Observers less familiar with the rich historical tapestry of the British Isles might ask, ‘What is all the fuss about?’, while someone familiar with British history immediately grasps the implications, official and between-the-lines. My intention in this article is to give a brief overview of the work of a historian and how it is done. A first explanation has already been given – historians explain what all the fuss is about. From Ireland to Palestine, most upheavals of our modern world, so rich in conflict, can be explained through the study and understanding of history and, ideally, lessons could be drawn from the understanding of past faults and follies.

Most people have a rough idea of what a historian does. The picture in our heads will most likely be of a bespectacled person with tousled hair in a threadbare tweed jacket (strangely, most historians in popular imagination are male), hunched over dusty parchments or of a more dynamic figure on a dramatic quest for a secret hidden in the past. The two extremes are perhaps not the worst of markers, because there actually are cases where crusty academics snatch away invaluable artefacts from grave robbers or shady antiquities dealers, but for the most part, the historian’s job is desk-bound with hikes through library corridors and up archive ladders for exercise. There seems to be a preference for the latter version of the two extremes in how films and books like to portray the unravelers of the past. Dr. Henry ‘Indiana’ Jones, after all, is a professor of archaeology and ancient history when not out and about wresting magical objects away from ruffians (he gets a great deal of research leave from his department).

A quick, simplistic answer to the question of what historians do is straightforward: they aim to answer a question on how, why, to whom and through whom or what a certain event in the past happened. The term history comes from the Greek historia, which means ‘inquiry’. Historia is also the title of one of the first major works about history, by the Greek author Herodotus (c. 484- c.

425 BC). The main problem about inquiring into past events is that they are just that: past. In most cases, the historian was not present at the event he deals with, even though there are notable exceptions, such as Winston Churchill’s history of World War Two (military history is often written by surviving combatants).

The classical way of working around this problem is to work like a detective and produce an account of what happened out of hints, material evidence, and, most important, witness statements.

These may be actual oral accounts, in the form of interviews or

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above: not all historical research is as exciting as indiana jones’ recordings. A lot of recent history is well within living memory, such as the Cold War, the Islamic Revolution in Iran or the fall of Communism in Europe, to take a few examples. Going back beyond the 1940s, however, living witnesses start to get thin on the ground, the last handful of men who fought in World War One may be dying literally as you read these lines. This is one of the reasons that the historian’s most important ‘tools’ are written records of the past, what historians call ‘sources’. The historian’s job consists mainly of locating and reading sources, writing about their findings and presenting the results. In the following, I will try to outline several ways history has been ‘done’ in the past and how it is ‘done’ today. I will then return to the question of sources and how they are used.

While we normally talk of ‘doing’ history, it is in my opinion more appropriate to talk of history being first ‘read’ and then ‘written’, since historians typically read sources, then write about what they find. If they are fortunate, they might even have an audience. Historians, like other scientists, form a hypothesis, research the problem and then argue the solution. In this, they resemble a police investigator, or even more a lawyer arguing a case, the ‘court’ being their academic colleagues, their students and the reading public.

To begin with, I have to make it clear that I am mainly talking of how history was and is ‘done’ in western Europe and in countries whose academic traditions originate in Europe. Other countries and cultures have developed distinct historical discourses and traditions of their own. While these are fascinating and legitimate in their own right, I will take the liberty of looking only at the European tradition due to the limited scope of this article.

an official and formal discipline at European university, although much historical scholarship was still done within other faculties, for example history of biblical lands and times in the framework of Theology. With nationalism on the rise in 19th century Europe, histories of nations became the main concern of many historians, and history saw a flowering as a scholarly tool for unearthing the origin of nations and proving their territorial claims to certain areas. The study of non-European history developed apace with the conquest of vast parts of Africa and Asia by colonial powers such as Great Britain and France.

The classical way of ‘doing history’ was for a very long time writing about the wars and the deeds of great men. The oldest ‘historical’ texts we know were produced by the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and China to commemorate the deeds of their rulers. History writing peaked in Europe during classical antiquity with the works of Roman authors like Plutarch and Livy or the Greek ‘father of history’ Herodotus, whom we have already met. Many of these texts are still used by historians (now as sources!), and some of these ancient writings make very entertaining reading, such as the Secret History of the court of the Byzantine emperor Justinian by Procopius of Caesarea.

In line with the 19th century’s fascination for scientific exactitude and the measurability of every phenomenon, historians aimed at researching past events as thoroughly as possible and to portray them as exactly as possible. One of the most prominent proponents of this school was the German Leopold von Ranke (17951886). He and his intellectual descendants produced vast, multivolume works of history aiming at describing events ‘as they really happened’ (‘wie es wirklich gewesen’), as well as far-ranging works which aimed at understanding the decline and fall of whole civilisations. Among the most well-known exponents of the ‘study of civilisations’ angle are the Briton Arnold J. Toynbee (The Study of History, 1934-61) and the German Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, 1918). Another development of this period were the vast editions of source texts which are still gratefully used by modern historians and which still impress us by the sheer scope of the work necessary to compile them. Again, the Germans with their penchant for combining genius and madness were foremost in this field.

These classical authors remained the role models for most writers of history in Europe after the fall of Rome and into the ‘dark ages’ (which historians have shown was not really that dark at all…). History writing in medieval Europe was fostered by the Church’s need to calculate the exact dates for feast days, especially Easter. So-called ‘Easter tables’ were used to compute such dates, and gradually people responsible for keeping these tables began to write down historical events next to the calculations. Besides these rather basic records, great chronicles were produced, such as the history of the Church in England by St. Bede or the history of the Franks by Gregory of Tours.

Since then, the historian’s ‘trade’ has seen tremendous changes and diversification. The ‘deeds of great men’ tradition was replaced with a shift in interest, the pioneers of this new trend being French historians, who took an interest in histories of societies in all their aspects, like social norms, the family or economies, and how geography and climate influenced societies in the past. The foremost exponent of this new way of thinking about history was the ‘Annales School’ centred around Fernand Braudel and others (named after their eponymous journal). Fernand Braudel is best known for his seminal social and economic history of the Mediterranean in the 16th century – available in the Netherhall library.

Since the emergence of the Annales group, the development of History as an academic discipline has snowballed, including histories of each and every thing, from virginity to the machine gun.

The de-classification of government files or the opening of whole new archives has created a wide new field for historians. For example (it comes to my mind since I am a historian of the Middle East), the gradual opening of the former state archives of the Ottoman Empire in the 1960s and 70s initiated a flurry of scholarly activity and the publication of hundreds of studies on Ottoman state administration, not all of them exciting reading material, to be honest.

History writing until the 19th century largely remained in the ‘deeds of great men’ tradition. One of the last flowers of the genre is Edward Gibbon’s monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-1789) a work now long outdated for its factual content, justly criticised for its vitriolic stance towards religion, but still much recommended for its masterly language. The early 1800s saw the establishment of History as

The 1960s and 70s, in the wake of the Annales, were the heyday of social and economic history, with Marxist history and its study of ‘class history’ growing alongside. The same era saw ‘postcolonial history’ arising in the wake of independence reaching many former colonies in Asia and Africa. Just as history stood once in the service of western powers as an instrument to study, understand and thereby subjugate their dominions, history was roped in once

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left: st bede hard at work recording the history of the church in england

right: oswald spengler’s ‘study of civilisation’, the decline of the west

opposite: A tendency in postcolonial history has been to study social groups which had been overlooked or disenfranchised by the colonial powers

again by the newly independent states to assert their freedom.

One aim was to raise public awareness of the pre-colonial past – and glory – of African and Asian civilisations, another to study social groups which had been overlooked or disenfranchised by the colonial powers. An example for these endeavours is the ‘Subaltern studies’ school of thinking which originated in India.

More recently, historians have begun a very fruitful cooperation with a number of other disciplines. Economics, politics, anthropology and sociology are the most obvious connecting points, but historians have also worked together with scholars of literature or even neuroscientists, exploring the interactions of history writing, autobiography and memory. Another ongoing concern of historians, subject of heated debates, has become the search for ‘alternative sources’, the move away from official, written documents in the widest sense to a plethora of other sources, ranging from ‘ego documents’ (letters, autobiographies and diaries) via works of art, maps and advertisements to Salvation Army leaflets.

There is not enough space for me to tell the ‘history of History’ in detail, but it has hopefully become apparent that historians today have many different traditions they can insert themselves into, and both ‘schools of thinking’ and ideological undertones continue to strongly flavour the atmosphere whenever a group of historians comes together, be it for a coffee in the Senior Common Room or at an international conference.

For all the changes, some quite fundamental, to the profession, the everyday work of a historian has remained largely the same, involving the proving of a hypothesis based on the reading and interpreting of sources. The past is full of yet unexplained events,

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and many existing explanations come under renewed scrutiny as new sources are found. I mentioned earlier the opening of the old Ottoman state archives by the Turkish republic, an archive which proved a vast receptacle of official documents, especially tax registers. From such ‘classical’ source materials, we know to the most minute details how for example Crete, an island in the Mediterranean, was governed under Ottoman rule, we know the level of tax revenue, the social and religious composition of its inhabitants (as Ottoman subjects were classified by religion), population numbers and much besides. What these dry fiscal documents do not tell us is how the everyday existence of the island’s communities actually looked like or how ordinary people lived their lives and thought of themselves. To tackle these questions, historians approach different types of sources. To remain with the example of Crete, Dr. George Dedes, one of my teachers at SOAS, has found – while rooting around in dusty archives –bilingual rhymed glossaries from Ottoman Crete. These are basically dictionaries in poem form, which show to what extent bilingualism (Greek and Turkish) was practiced within society.

As regards my own experiences in ‘doing history’, what I enjoy most is the searching and finding of sources. This can be literally dirty work; historians do not get covered in mud like archaeologists, but an afternoon of leafing through early 20th century newspapers leaves one with black hands nonetheless. As a child, I got enormous pleasure from stories of the past which older relatives told me, so one could say I am a bit of a natural. It is still the unearthing, re-telling and analysing of stories which I enjoy most, as well as interpreting these stories – not just why things happened, but why they are recorded in this particular way.

In the course of my studies, my interest has shifted from the mere events (even if the mere history of events still fascinates me to the point of occasionally reading Gibbon) to how individuals reacted in the face of historical change, and how individuals thought and wrote about them. Diaries, autobiographies, letters and opinion pieces from newspapers, what I have called ‘ego documents’ earlier, became a pet subject of mine. My PhD project originated in a footnote in another historian’s work –as it is often the case. This footnote in a journal article about Ottoman and Turkish autobi-

ography said: ‘A wider analysis of these texts remains a desideratum.’ I had my topic. I set out to examine a number (about 12) of autobiographies whose authors lived and wrote in the Turkish republic, but had grown up before this state replaced the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Primarily, my work does a survey of which topics are discussed in these memoirs and how the ‘lost world’ of childhood and youth in a state which no longer existed is described. I considered myself lucky that I was using published books, readily available in libraries in Turkey (for example in the National Library in Ankara) and at SOAS, my home institution. The smile dropped off my face to a certain extent as I started ploughing my way through literary-style Turkish with its sentences half a page long. In fact, Turkish friends remark that when I speak their language, I sound like a person who went to school around 1900...

The second discovery was that besides merely examining the content of these works, my research brought to light the question of how the authors evaluated the ‘past worlds’ of their early lives, an evaluation often markedly different from how the official historiography of the Turkish republic liked to present the country in the final decade or two before the republic. Like every good historian I had worked on my ‘methodology’, developed an awareness of how autobiography has been approached and analysed by the study of literature, the discipline it originally ‘belongs’ to (his-

torians have developed quite a penchant for poaching on other disciplines’ land…). It dawned on me that besides these topics, I would have to pause in mid-dissertation and read around the topics of ‘alternative history writing’ and ‘autobiography within nationalist projects’. I had, to borrow the terminology of the French polymath Michel Foucault, stumbled on a whole new ‘discourse’.

This is where the pursuit of history has taken me. When not teaching tutorials at SOAS or shedding tears over Foucault’s writings in order to develop my methodology, I labour at reading further in my Turkish autobiographies. Most of the time, it is enjoyable reading, sometimes saddening as one reads of hard times the authors lived through. The next step in the historian’s endeavour begins here: to combine the re-telling of source content and the analysis into a palatable narrative. As one moves along, one has to think outside the cosy library and bear a future reception of one’s work in mind: the narrative has to be written clearly, and without any bias. This enjoyable, but sometimes slow and weary work takes me at 500 words per day towards completion of my thesis and, hopefully, someday to a book publication, something like Forgotten Voices of the Ottomans. If a publisher reads this, do not hesitate to get in touch!

Netherhall resident Philipp Wirtz teaches at SOAS and is completing his PhD in Ottoman history.

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paul rodgers reports back from easter week in rome

he wind whipped past Netherhall resident Tom Sloan’s head high above the rooftops of Rome. Perched atop the roof terrace at the residence of the British Ambassador to the Holy See, Tom could see perhaps for the first time that Rome was built on seven hills, something one rarely notices at street level. Mr. George Edgar, Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy and our host for the afternoon, directed the gaze of Tom and other Netherhall

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residents through the light haze of the Roman afternoon west towards Vatican Hill where the bulb-shaped dome of St. Peter’s Basilica gently peaked out from the ancient towers and monuments of the city. Mr. Edgar, of course, knew the sight well; he has been working closely with the Holy See for over a year now, serving first as one of the chief organizers for the recent state visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the UK in September 2010. The hill off

standing (from l-r): joseph arizpe, danny forester, matthew roche-saunders, xavier bosch, mike mulroy, paul rodgers, matthew murphy, peter brown, javier peralta, crouching (from l-r): joshua franzen, phil moss, tom sloan, pablo hinojo become more Roman. Several residents from Netherhall House made the UNIV trip this year. Other students from Manchester, Cambridge, Scotland and even Wales joined them and ensured that the UK was well-represented. Among the group were found strong commonwealth ties with Josh Franzen coming from as far as New Zealand to join the group, perhaps travelling the farthest distance of any UNIV participant this year. Former colonial interests from across the pond were also well-represented by two Americans, myself and a divided Tom Sloan, all of whom enjoyed the company of their former countrymen immensely with no lessening of either patriotic zeal or laughter on either side.

From Exeter also came two Matthews who were often indistinguishable, except that one insisted on being called ‘doctor’ and the other would at odd moments sing Welsh songs to the great delight and confusion of local Romans.

Joining the group of 14 from the UK were nearly 3,000 other students from as far away as Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Kenya, Mexico, and the United States, and also students from parts more local like Spain, Poland, France, and Austria. All had descended on Rome to be together for these seven days whose broad theme was ‘Living Freedom Decisively.’

From 16th to 24th April, our loyal UNIV band freely walked the ancient pathways of the eternal city sometimes resorting to newly modernized buses or the Roman underground system. Rome is a demanding city, especially on the feet with its cobblestone streets and pavement. Yet, everyone in the group embraced the rigours Rome had to throw at us with legionnaire-like enthusiasm. Much of this was helped by frequent gelato stops along the way, and our steady pace was sustained by the healthy fare provided at Gianicolo and Pastarito, the Roman eateries most beloved on the trip.

in the distance had now brought him and his family to Rome to head the Embassy since the reassignment of Ambassador Francis Campbell earlier this year. The Basilica of St. Peter, the world’s largest and most recognized church, and its famous square framed splendidly by the open arms of Bernini’s colonnades, which seem almost to embrace the entire world, also brought several Netherhall residents and other students from across the UK to Rome the week before Easter for UNIV 2011.

UNIV is an international gathering of university students that has been taking place in Rome for more than four decades. First encouraged by St. Josemaría Escrivá in the 1960’s, students over the years have come from every corner of the globe to Rome for Holy Week to be close to the Pope, to meet one another and take advantage of the great culture and history of Rome, in short, to

Part of the group travelled by plane together from Gatwick Airport to Rome on the 16th. Having landed in Rome, we were met by a charming white-haired taxi driver named Leonardo, who warmly greeted us and proceeded to drive us to our lodgings just outside central Rome. Having arrived safely at our lodgings, we met a young American, Phil Moss, waiting for us. Phil, always smartly dressed, studies in Rome and helped us many a time throughout the week. On one particular occasion, he secured for us a highly prized letter that allowed us to bypass the notoriously long queue for the Vatican Museums: truly a priceless artefact.

The first great event of UNIV 2011 was Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday presided by Pope Benedict XVI. There was a stir of great excitement in the air as the 84 year old leader of the Catholic Church entered the square among a great procession of palms to commemorate Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem the week of his Passion. Palm Sunday marks the official beginning of Holy Week, the holiest time of the year for Christians.

The day is one marked with great joy that quickly turns towards the sorrowful narrative of the Passion, which was solemnly sung in the square.

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The afternoon took us to the Roman Forum and Coliseum where we received an excellent tour from Peter, an Oxford man and now a Roman student. Peter led us through the pages of history as we walked through the ruins of what was once the heart of the ancient republic turned empire. The Coliseum offered the best sense of the scale that ancient Rome achieved. Among the group there were no volunteers to re-enact any of the gladiatorial matches and the closest anyone came to a lion was when a black cat, a local Coliseum resident, crossed our path.

The next day took us to the scavi or excavations underneath St. Peter’s Basilica. There we were guided by an Italian archaeologist through the excavated necropolis which St. Peter’s is built on. Going down a steep set of steps into the ground, we witnessed the slow passage of time in the different layers of buildings which stood at the site on Vatican Hill. We snaked our way through the ancient chambers and tombs. As we went deeper into the excavations, the air turned more humid, and the walls became wet with the water seeping in from the nearby Tiber. Our guide pointed out some of the earliest surviving Christian mosaics until we arrived at a small chamber at the end of what looked like a row of brick houses. There was great anticipation as we slowly made our way along the old street to this small chamber. Here at last we had come upon the tomb of St. Peter. Covered now in protective glass, the second-century monument which marked the original tomb is surprisingly humble. One could barely distinguish it from many of the other monuments that surround it in the necropolis.

Our guide told us the fascinating story of how the tomb was discovered by archaeologists in the 1940s precisely where they thought it would be: directly underneath the high altar of St. Peter’s. But when the tomb was opened, no bones or remains were found inside. Yet, an Italian epigrapher, Margherita Guarducci, working on inscriptions behind the tomb made the critical discovery. Within the wall behind the tomb she discovered a box containing bones. The bones were a complete skeleton all save the feet, and the bones appeared to be those of a man around the age of 60. According to tradition, St. Peter was crucified in Rome but not presuming himself worthy to be executed in the same manner as Jesus asked out of humility to be crucified upside-down.

Hanging upside-down, St. Peter’s feet likely were removed in order to take him down from the cross. There seemed little reason to doubt: the bones in front of us were the very bones of St. Peter.

The midpoint of the week was highlighted by a memorable Mass said in the early morning by Netherhall chaplain Fr. Joe Evans in the crypt of St. Peter’s in a small chapel decorated with beautiful frescoes telling the life of St. Zoe, an early Roman martyr who was renowned for her devotion to St. Peter. Later that morning, we made our way to the UNIV congress at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. There Dr. Alexandre Havard, a Russian businessman and director of a leadership institute in Moscow, spoke on the theme of the virtue of magnanimity. Dr. Havard’s presence filled the large lecture hall from corner to corner as he held the rapt attention of all in the room.

In the afternoon, we were invited for tea at the residence of the British Ambassador to the Holy See. We were greeted warmly by Mr. Edgar, his wife and daughters, and the deputy head of the mission, Mr. Justin Bedford. In a residence right at the heart of

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Rome, their hospitality had a distinctly English flavour as generous supplies of tea, sandwiches, and cakes made their way around the room. While we sipped our tea, Mr. Edgar gave a brief talk on the inner workings of the embassy which was followed by questions and of course more tea and delicious cakes. Our short visit ended on a very high note when Mr. Edgar led us up to the residence’s roof terrace for a bird’s eye view of Rome that was simply breathtaking.

On Wednesday, we greeted Pope Benedict XVI at his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square. During the audience, the Pope gave a special greeting and message to all the UNIV participants, who cheered thunderously whenever mentioned. His message was simple yet powerful: to use these days in Rome ‘to rediscover the person of Christ and to live a strong spiritual experience and so that you return home with the desire to witness the heavenly Father’s mercy.’ A lucky member of our group even got the opportunity to meet personally with the Pope afterwards, thanking him for his recent visit to the UK last year. The bright look and smile on his face after the meeting told the entire story.

Wednesday also saw a large get-together with the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarría. After a moving greeting where Bishop Echevarría urged us all to become great sources of joy for the world, he opened the floor to questions from the UNIV students in attendance. The first question came from a member of the UK group, Daniel (Danny) Forrester from Glasgow, Scotland. Danny immediately won the hearts and affections of the entire gathering and especially the admiration of Bishop Eche-

“The great sense of otherworldliness in these events is, of course, difficult to describe, but their message of Christ’s saving light for the world and our share in bearing that light to others speaks straight to the heart.”

at the univ forum, dr. alexandre havard spoke about the cirtue of magnaminity in business varría, who was impressed both by Danny’s question as well as by his long locks of hair and his proudly worn kilt. All left the get-together with much to consider and talk about.

With Thursday we entered the Easter Triduum, the three holiest days of the year. The time of these three days feels like no other, and they are punctuated by three great liturgical events: the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday evening, the Good Friday Service, and the Easter Vigil that begins on Holy Saturday evening. These three days commemorate the climax of all history: the events surrounding the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

It is not surprising then that these days were also the high point of UNIV 2011.

This utterly unique march of time accompanied our group on our journey as we headed to the Lateran Basilica on Good Friday morning. The Lateran serves as the official seat of the Pope and is called ‘the mother and head of all the churches of the whole world.’ Right next to the Lateran Basilica are the Scala Santa, the ‘Holy Steps.’ Walking up the stairs praying on one’s knees is a traditional penitential practice still observed. Some of the group went up these ancient steps brought from the old Roman praetorium of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem to Rome by the mother of the emperor Constantine in the fourth century. Others also made their way to the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, which houses many objects preserved from the passion of Jesus like the inscribed wooden tablet above his cross. That evening we gathered at nightfall around the Coliseum to be with the Pope for the Stations of the Cross.

Holy Saturday was day of great waiting. In the afternoon, some passed the time by visiting St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, the great Roman church dedicated to St. Paul, the co-patron of Rome along with St. Peter. Around six o’clock, we all began to queue in St. Peter’s Square for the evening’s Easter Vigil at nine o’clock.

Finally, after waiting for more than three hours outside, the doors of St. Peter’s were opened and we made our way into the basilica.

Once inside, the lights were soon switched off as the vigil officially began. The darkness symbolizes the night before Easter Sunday and the darkness of sin and death felt in the world before Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The Pope entered the nave of the great basilica in complete darkness, all save one light, the glowing light of the Easter candle, which was carried up the nave towards the altar. The deacon holding the candle chanted ‘Lumen Christi’ (‘Light of Christ’), and everyone responded ‘Deo Gratias’ (‘Thanks be to God’). The light from the Easter Candle was then given to others holding candles among the congregation, and the flame from one quickly spread to the hundreds of pilgrims present filling the entire church with a spectacular light.

The great sense of otherworldliness in these events is, of course, difficult to describe, but their message of Christ’s saving light for the world and our share in bearing that light to others in the world speaks straight to the heart. UNIV 2011 helped bring this message to us, and it is hoped this message of light, peace, and great joy may also find its way into every heart.

Paul Rodgers is studying for a doctorate in theology at the University of Cambridge. He is regular visitor to Netherhall.

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dear sir... dilip bassi mounts a measured defence of the National theatre’s ‘nt live’ initiative

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was most interested to read Simon Jared’s Filming Theatre article in the last issue, which compared the merits of live theatre with the broadcast medium. Like the author, I also saw both versions of the King Lear. Whilst I agree that a transmitted event is always going to be a poor substitute for the ‘real thing’, we must nonetheless consider the merits of the medium.

The initiative was developed to bring theatre to a wider audience and has been widely pioneered, as mentioned in Simon’s article, by the National Theatre (although some opera houses have been doing it for some time on a smaller scale). The performances they have broadcast to date have all generally been major plays with familiar names and include: The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett, Phaedra starring Helen Mirren and a stage version of Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle (of Slumdog Millionaire fame). The last of these sold out for its entire run many months before it was aired and the NT Live broadcast might have been the only way for many people to see the show.

The National Theatre receives a heavy amount of public subsidy.

Despite the recently announced cuts by the Arts Council, it will still get about £18 million of funding each year from the government. In these austere times, publicly funded arts need to justify their worth more than ever. The NT Live venture has taken these successful plays and bought them to an international audience.

Of note, several of the plays have warranted encore broadcasts, such was the success of their initial transmission. For all those people who may never bother to go to the theatre and may not even live near one, surely it is a good thing to be able to see the performance, even if it is on the big screen? It may even provoke their interest and encourage them to see one of the many shows that is playing onstage and not being broadcast.

Back to King Lear: whilst I thought this was one of the best interpretations I have seen in recent years, Simon did comment on the Donmar Warehouse as being ‘small’. In fact the capacity of this theatre is about 250 seats and over the two months that King Lear ran, despite the fact it played to full houses, less than 20,000 people saw it. This is a tiny number of people when you compare it to a pop concert or sporting event. I have always campaigned to make the theatre accessible. Many people still see it as elitist or expensive. A pastime for those with too much time and spare cash. A luxury.

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The reality is that theatre is a commercial venture and that financial success is necessary in order for it to flourish and progress. Live broadcasts are one way of addressing this and showing the international arts world that we are thinking of the greater picture. We often develop ‘London Syndrome’ whilst living here ourselves and forget that there is life outside. Not everyone might be able to make the journey during a limited run of a show, be able to stay overnight, and then discover the show is sold out anyway. I think the National is cleverly planning ahead and addressing who the future generations of theatre-goers might be.

The broadcast of King Lear I saw was in Richmond. This is not exactly far from London – in fact about 30 minutes by train to the National Theatre! I asked a mother there with three teenagers why they had come to the cinema when they lived so close to the theatre, and the very same production of King Lear was even coming to the Richmond Theatre as part of a (sold out) national tour. She replied that the theatre is: ‘too expensive for all of us to go.... you have to go for a meal, [pay] the train fare. It’s much easier and cheaper to come here. We do go to the theatre but we can’t go all the time. This is excellent. All tickets sold out ages ago for the Richmond [stage] dates, so we can see things we might miss otherwise.’

above: alex jennings and richard griffiths in nt live’s production of alan bennett’s the habit of art

below: simon’s original article in the april edition

I have no plans to drop my theatregoing and start watching all my shows in the local Odeon and I still have as many reservations as Simon with the medium. However I have recently succumbed to the frequent broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera New York to my local cinema, as I simply can’t fly there on a monthly basis to see everything I desire. These showings even manage to sell out the cinemas that are screening them. It may not be as good as the real thing, but it’s better than not going at all and has found a role in my theatre life.

Dr. Dilip Bassi is currently working as a GP registrar. He was a member of the Olivier Awards Panel 2005-2006

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watch out! he’s not behind y 20 netherhall news

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here is a common misconception that all slasher films are made for brain-dead audiences mostly consisting of teens who do not pay attention to anything other than the clichéd horror key moments for some minor, cheap thrills. Nonetheless, judging a film a priori through this flawed prejudice is for me as groundless as judging someone before making any contact or simply avoiding taking the person seriously due to personal racial prejudice. I find it difficult to understand why this prejudice even grips people with an academic background in film theory or diehard cinephiles.

We have so many terms that apply to any form of a priori discrimination in the political world. But this political correctness should apply at a cultural level as well, since dismissing something based on an initially flawed categorization from the start can be as unjustified as rejecting someone due to his/her ethnic background. Wes Craven’s latest film, Scream 4, proves the need for affirmative action at the artistic level as well, or at least the consideration of a proper term against unfair prejudice, such as genrist (or something more creative than that) – a person who dismisses a film from the start based on the genre characteristics it has been labeled with. In this particular case, I will be referring to the horror genre, but not exclusively.

One can notice two genres that have been facilely excluded by the Academy for award considerations throughout the years – horror and sci-fi. While the first has never got close to any significant accolades, the latter is still not in the safe zone despite Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (which US critics at the time of its release in 1972 dismissed from the start as a Soviet propaganda film!). I am very much aware that most pretentious cinephiles who label themselves as fans of arthouse films or ultra-independent cinema (mostly made of footage stolen from other people’s work and edited together in Windows Movie Maker) just for the sake of an elitist and snobbish selfgratification will dismiss horror films from the start as being too mainstream or anti-intellectual without taking as much as two seconds to remember films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and The Birds or George A. Romero’s politically charged Night of the Living Dead. As a film studies student I have met so many people dismissing everything mainstream to the point of asking about a film’s budget and gross revenue as if those factors alone assure a great cinematic experience. The slasher (sub)genre for example has been grotesquely overlooked by the Academy right from the get-go.

First of all, for anyone still scratching their head when reading the term slasher, this refers to a particular exploitation style (low-budget, independent, counterculture flicks that started in grindhouse theatres as early as the 60s) within the horror genre. In slasher films the plot is usually centered on stereotypical underaged protagonists trying to survive the attacks of a mysterious, masked murderer taking them down one by one. Sounds stupid? Well… it’s not. Some of the first films within the genre include Alfred

you!

Hitchcock’s Psycho and John Carpenter’s Halloween, universally regarded by film scholars as classics. However, I bend my knee to Scream 4 because it has rectified my knowledge in film history – apparently, Psycho is not the common ancestor of all slashers; that place is reserved for Peeping Tom, which was released only a few months before Hitchcock’s masterpiece, as Craven’s film explains.

Wes Craven’s Scream 4 takes the genre to a whole new level. It does not thrive on horror clichés or even the conventions expected from such a film. Instead, it constantly plays with our expectations entirely. Apart from his career as a director associated with the horror genre, Wes Craven is also a film theorists and he is applying his knowledge and understanding of the fabula, which film theorists David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson label as a set of conventions and expectations that goes beyond the plot of a film and connects it indirectly with previous works. Everything we are expecting to see is delivered for comic relief, not in the key moments when the killer strikes. Instead, Craven is doing the exact opposite, making any hardcore horror fan’s knowledge utterly futile in uncovering the mystery of the film. This is not just a film intended to make you jump off your seat in terror, treating its viewers with disrespect by offering the same old clichés. Instead, it avoids them with extraordinary precision. The protagonists, who are very cineliterate themselves, are wholly aware of their reality in their attempt to change its outcome by predicting and going against the usual horror genre conventions in order to assure their survival. However, they are not privileged as the spectators with the same perspective, so we will always be one step ahead of them, although never quite enough to predict the ending or have any clue about what’s going to happen next.

Consequently, the process of identification takes a different form in this film. We no longer watch these characters for the sake of cheap thrills and dismiss them entirely after their gory deaths.

Instead we carefully examine the situation and broader picture along with them. Because of this, I have to say that Scream 4 treats its characters with more respect and dignity than any other horror film produced recently. These characters are not disposable plot conveniences, they are very three-dimensional and are meant to be taken seriously. Other than that, the obvious references to Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, and the subtle homages to cult and classic horrors embedded for the more cineliterate viewers to decipher should make for a pleasant and unexpectedly challenging cinematic experience.

I can go on about the many aspects which make Scream 4 a really good film that overcomes all the unjust stereotypes associated with its genre, but I will end up spoiling it. Suffice it to say, this is not a shocking film – it does not contain any sexual content or references, it is not over-the-top gory, and it is not insulting to any type of audience. It is not meant to shock you, it is meant to get you thinking and, just for that alone, it is well worth your time.

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how to live on full! and die on empty! luke wilkinson is finally free to be himself on purpose

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here’s only two of us in the room: you and me. So, can I be myself?’ With these words Sergio Maresca introduced himself to those of us gathered in the lounge at Netherhall on 9th May. Sergio is an international motivational speaker whose passion is ‘peak performance’, and while visiting London on a Europe-wide business tour he had kindly come to share his wisdom with current residents.

A former resident himself and an avid reader of Netherhall News, over the past six years Sergio has regularly sent in tips and comments to Zubin and myself for the ongoing development of the content you find ‘twixt these covers, and as such we had been invited to dine with him before the talk. We were pleased to discover a kindred spirit, a man for whom ‘style is being yourself on purpose’, who had taken much delight in noting the particular ways in which we each ignored social norms and asserted our individual style: me by neither shaving nor wearing a shirt for dinner, and Zubin by not being on time! By the end of the meal, Sergio had encouraged and affirmed both of us in our slightly unusual choices of career, reassuring us that we would never be rich, but always be happy.

‘Following your dreams and being the person you were made to be is the single most important thing you can choose to do.’ As we sat down with other residents to hear Sergio speak, he not only requested permission to be himself, but encouraged each person present to do the same. Using the analogy of a ladder, Sergio described how many of us subconsciously pursue things in our lives. We start out climbing the ladder and feel pretty good, but sooner or later the blizzards of life come along and knock us off.

We become determined not to get deterred from our goal, so we start climbing again, and we climb harder, more fiercely, ignoring anything that threatens our balance on the ladder and our pursuit to the top. But what happens when we reach the summit? ‘You realise your ladder’s been against the wrong friggin’ wall all along!

Take time out now while you’re still young to make sure your ladder is up against the right wall, and if not do something about it!’

In other words, asked Sergio, are you pursuing your own dream or someone else’s? Because if you’re not following a path that will let you grow and develop as the person you really are, then you’ll only ever look back with regret.

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‘Focus on the seeds you sow, not the harvest you want to reap’

Sergio Carlo Maresca

Sergio believes that from an early age we begin to hear a message about ourselves that we’re only good enough ‘if…’ This may happen at home, if we feel our parents’ love is dependent on our behaviour, or our performance in sport, music, academia. We most certainly get this message from our schooling, where A-grade students inevitably enjoy greater praise and admiration from teachers, and it continues right on into our working lives. Employers will praise and value staff who follow the company vision, who keep their heads down and don’t rock the boat; if you’re in any way entrepreneurial then you’re considered a threat to the company. All of this contributes to a repeated notion that plays over and over in our heads like a cassette tape: ‘I’m not good enough…

I’m not good enough…I’m not good enough’.

How can we overcome the fear of being ourselves? Sergio showed us how it began for him, taking a cassette tape out of his pocket and cracking it in two, then stamping it to pieces on the floor.

Sharing very personal stories from his own life, he explained to us how he had explored every motive for being brilliant – power, money, comfort, pleasure, fear – and found nothing but dissatisfaction. Life has given Sergio a fair few reasons to slip off his ladder and start again from the bottom, and it was only in his forties that he discovered that he had been trying to climb the wrong ladder all along. Since then he has used his gifts to serve others, and splits his time between giving motivational training to corporate clients and working with young offenders back home in Australia. He has learnt to judge each day not by the harvest he reaps, but by the seeds he has sown. After all, life can still throw a spanner in the works from time to time so we shouldn’t expect it to be fair. ‘It’s like standing in a field with an angry bull and expecting it not to attack you because you’re a vegetarian!’.

above: the ‘being yourself on purpose’ pose!

But what the knocks of life have taught Sergio is not to give up trying, but rather to live each moment as though it were his last.

He told us the powerful story of how he had one opportunity to forgive his estranged father before he (the father) was killed in a car crash, and he has since made it a priority to forgive anyone who hurts him in any way. He told us he finds strength in prayer – if we look at Christ on the cross and think of what he had to forgive then don’t we need to as well? ‘You’ll never escape the entrapment of your past unless you do’. This allows us to begin again each time we slip up or get hurt by others. As St Josemaria would say, life consists of beginning and beginning again throughout the day.

“life can still throw a spanner in the works from time to time so we shouldn’t expect it to be fair. It’s like standing in a field with an angry bull and expecting it not to attack you because you’re a vegetarian!”

below: the conformist pose, eyes front, dour expression.

Although Sergio had encouraged us all to use the gifts we’ve been given in the service of others, and to pursue our dreams rather than following the crowd, he warned us against complacency: people will envy those who pursue what they’re passionate about, but they often forget that ‘passion’ comes from the Greek and Latin words ‘to suffer’. After the talk we saw the depth of passion Sergio has for what he does. He stayed in the lounge fielding questions from several of the residents who stayed behind to share their thoughts and, in some cases, struggles. Sergio thanked each person for their honesty and made sure he had answered their question satisfactorily before moving on. We stayed ‘shooting crap’ with him for a good hour after his talk, and although he seemed weary from a long day of business meetings and travel, Sergio showed no signs of wanting to get away until everyone there had had a chance to air their thoughts. Perhaps it’s because, as he told us, Netherhall has been like a family to him, a place where he is able to be himself.

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crossing paths simon wickham-smith explains his connection to the prime minister of mongolia

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n the late summer of 1989, I still had nowhere to live in my last year at King’s College but I was fortunate enough to be granted a place at Netherhall. I made friends, including Mark and Kevin Ley, Graham Knowles, Matthew Hitchens and Stuart Flynn, and worked hard (well, hardish), all of which kept me relatively sane. But one term there was a new face, Sükhbaataryn Batbold, who came from Mongolia. With a keen interest in Tibetan Buddhism, and therefore somewhat pushy, I sought to engage him in religious discussion. But it turned out that he was disinterested in religion, was studying economics and politics, and intended going into Mongolian politics. I knew nothing about Mongolia, and I don’t believe that Batbold and I had much more to say thereafter, but the interaction stayed with me nonetheless.

money by teaching ESL, and I began to research and translate the poetry of an early 19th century Mongol monk named Danzanravjaa (1803-1856).

In my years after leaving Netherhall, I spent time as a Buddhist monk in Scotland, managed to learn classical Mongolian, translated Tibetan texts and returned to lay life in Oxford where I started to work on the weird and complex biography of the 6th Dalai Lama, who was born in 1682 and who died (depending upon which tradition you follow) either in 1706 or 1746. In the interim, I helped to run a Buddhist centre in Oxford, I made

Through looking deeply into Buddhism, I have come better to understand the writings of Christian medieval mystics such as Meister Eckhart, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, the Russian mystic Silouan the Athonite and the Early Church Fathers, and that one must actively seek retreat in the hermitage of the soul, rather than in a mountain fastness perhaps – or, as I did, in a Buddhist monastery in Scotland.

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I published Danzanravjaa’s complete works in English translation in Mongolia in 2006, and in 2007 moved to Seattle, where I am now writing a PhD dissertation at the University of Washington.

This dissertation, on Altan Ovoo, a novel by the leading writer G.Mend-Ooyo, will most probably be the first PhD on contemporary Mongol literature. As well as this work, I’m busy translating poetry by many of the country’s leading literary figures, and teaching Tibetan and Mongolian Studies on campus to a small but dedicated bunch of scholars.

left: simon and Sükhbaataryn in their netherhall days. simon can be seen standing second from right, with Sükhbaataryn kneeling front far left

My life now, then, is strangely positioned between my academic work and my family in Seattle. I go to Mongolia most years, and now, as I say, my old Netherhall friend Batbold has as Prime Minister (since 2009) one of the most powerful roles in the country’s development. He moved into this position from his former job as Foreign Secretary, a post in which he clearly excelled. He developed, despite his swift rise through the levels of government, good relations with the current US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and helped to promote the so-called ‘third neighbor’ policy, through which Mongolia looks beyond its geographical neighbors of Russia and China to the US, thereby cementing a stronger relationship with the world beyond Eurasia. Moreover, Batbold has been part of the machine which has promoted Mongolia as a peacekeeping nation within the UN, and there is now talk of its being elected as one of the non-permanent members of the Security Council.

I hope that Batbold will be able, as one of his country’s most powerful politicians and highest-profile public figures, to use his position to steer Mongolia through the next few years, years which will most probably prove crucial to its development. According to the World Bank, Mongolia will soon become one of the fastest growing economies in the world, primarily because of the development of the country’s vast mineral wealth. Geography has provided Mongolia with a very important strategic position, and for this reason it has become necessary for the world’s superpowers – the US, Europe, China, Russia – to gain a good above: mongol monk understanding of its history, its culture and its socio-politics. I danzanravjaa am working currently to find funding for a lectureship in Mongol Cultural Studies at the University of Washington, which will both left: Sükhbaataryn batbold, as current prime re-establish the university’s traditional position as a leader in the field (although this has not been really the case since the early minister of mongolia 1970s) and promote the understanding of this fascinating and far left: simon wickham- increasingly important country in the modern world.

Simon Wickham-Smith is a musician, translator and academic. smith

below: mongolian capital What are you up to? If you are a former resident and have an interesting story to tell, we’d love to hear it! ulan bator

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music, beauty and the eternal piers tattersall is inspired by a contemporary composer keen to bring beauty into the modern world

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hat does it mean to be a composer in the 21st century? This is a question which often confronts James MacMillan, most particularly when he takes a taxi in Glasgow! ‘Oh aye, so ye’re a composer. Have I heard any of yer music?’ ‘Probably not’, is his frequent and resigned reply.

When one does not write film music, pop music or music for West-End shows it is unlikely that the general public will be familiar with one’s work. The concert halls of Britain are not so well populated as composers or performers would wish.

Not that MacMillan’s compositions are rarefied or obscure.

Described by the BBC as ‘powerful’ and ‘extremely accessible’, his music has long been a staple of musicians and ensembles, most notably his percussion concerto Veni, veni, Emmanuel and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. Along with various other luminaries of the contemporary classical music scene, his work can be found gracing the airwaves of Radio 3 and concert halls up and down the country, and also widely beyond the shores of his native Scotland.

It was, however, in good measure this question which brought Mr MacMillan to Netherhall on 16th May. Is classical music still relevant to modern society? And what is the relationship between music, beauty and the eternal?

Growing up in rural Ayrshire, MacMillan was more often than not confronted with the attitude that beauty was an irrelevance or a luxury unaffordable by the working class. But he is convinced that this beauty is not something that need remain inaccessible to anyone. It does take some effort. In many ways it is understandable people should be more content with Lady Gaga or James Blunt than with Brahms or Liszt. The former do not require the least bit of exercise to engage with. The latter requires more time and more concentration. It is, says MacMillan, this sacrifice of time that we are so reluctant to make. Yet, in doing so we can find a beauty that has given joy to people throughout the ages.

However, since the end of World War II there was a seemingly inexorable march away from the pursuit of beauty. Both in ‘classical’ music and, even, he argued, in Roman Catholic liturgical music, beauty has been increasingly regarded with suspicion. For the artistic elites of Darmstadt, Cologne and Paris beauty was kitsch and insincere, incapable of expressing man’s position in the world. For some of the more extreme liturgical reformers ‘beauty’ was seen as incapable of connecting with the common people.

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However, there are signs, both in the world of classical music and in liturgical circles that things are changing. The music of Thomas Adès is profoundly beautiful and with the recent clarifications regarding the use of the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, an old and enduring kind of beauty is, it seems, making a comeback. MacMillan, himself a devout Catholic, is making his own contribution to bringing back a sense of beauty in Christian worship. For example, he composed the music settings for the two Masses of Pope Benedict XVI on the occasion of the Pontiff’s visit to Britain in September 2010.

Indeed, the very word ‘classical’ to describe music is one that MacMillan notes would have been met with a certain amount of confusion if in the 13th or 14th centuries it had been applied to some of the sacred music of the time. Great medieval composers like Machaut and Josquin would very likely not understand why a term normally used to refer to the civilisations of Ancient Greece and Rome has now been extended to their own compositions.

‘Classical’ rightly understood only really covers a period of about 400 years from the first stirrings of the Baroque with composers like Montiverdi and Vivaldi to the vast operas of Wagner and Richard Strauss in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rather than using one word to cover all of the movements and currents among those writing and performing music from the time of Machaut up until our own time, MacMillan suggests that the pursuit of beauty is something that can be said to unite much, if not all, ‘classical’ music. For the Josquins and the Palestrinas of this world it was the beauty of God that they sought to convey, while for Wagner it was the exquisite pathos of ‘love-in-death’ that reached its height in Tristan und Isolde. This is a tradition that has always taken time and effort to understand, but like all good things it is not only the effort involved in understanding but also the beauty itself that teaches us more about what it is to be human.

Piers Tattersall, in his 3rd year at Netherhall, has completed a Masters in composition at the Royal College of Music. A composer himself, he wrote the music for the ballet Rumpelstiltskin, performed at the Sadler’s Wells’ Peacock Theatre, London, by the London Children’s Ballet from 28th April to 1st May 2011.

welfare comes first: the new student politics zubin mistry is moved by the story of the monks at Tibhirine

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tudent unions are finding a new role in the modern university context with a greater focus on the welfare of their members than on radical politics. Ryan Wain, President of King’s College London Students’ Union (KCLSU), told Netherhall residents how a recent review has led unions to adopt the status of a charitable trust. Such a status prohibits party political activity, a fact which could lead to a decline in political campaigning by unions. But it could also lead to them operating more professionally and being more concerned about the day to day needs of their student body.

Ryan, who has been head of KCLSU for two years and now leaves to take up a job with the advertising company Saatchi and Saatchi, argued that achieving consensus was an important part of his job. He has tried to maintain good relations with the College authorities while standing up vigorously for student interests. He did not see the two as incompatible. He gave the example of the debate over student fees citing an example of one particular student union which campaigned actively for a reduction of fees but thereby lost the chance to

from l-r: pablo hinojo, peter brown, ryan wain, james osborn be involved in the discussion over access and support for less well-off students. He believed that a more helpful approach was to focus on engaging with the college over the question of access and support. As a result, KCLSU was and continues to be fully involved in the decision-making process in this area making its voice heard constructively to help students in need.

Speaking at Netherhall on Monday 23rd May, he explained when asked that his proudest achievement as Union president was helping to diffuse a potentially explosive situation when a particular student society invited a speaker with radical views.

What could have been very bad publicity for the College and the Union ended positively when Ryan was able to get all parties involved around the table: College authorities, the organising society and also those societies who felt offended by the expected views of the speaker. A compromise was reached by which the talk could go ahead, the speaker avoided saying anything offensive and the different societies engaged constructively with each other. Scandal-hungry journalists were left with nothing to sensationalise.

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jean marc harel lives rem neil pickering recalls a much-loved promoter of mauritian development

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ean Marc was one of the first residents at the beginning of the era of expansion of Netherhall when the Queen Mother opened what was then called the ‘new wing’ on 1st November 1966. Along with Paul Guerin, Jean Marc was one of the first Mauritians to stay at Netherhall. In spite of it being the 60s when many of the residents imitated the Beatles and others with their longish hair, and there were student riots all over Europe in 1968, Jean Marc was known for spending much of his time in the study-room. His fiancée, Marilyn, was also in London at this time but did not venture into the all-male Netherhall residence.

With all his application, he was to do very well. Jean Marc returned to Mauritius and joined accountancy group De Chazal Du Mée, becoming joint managing partner in 1981. He also later ventured into hotels and educational activities, never being daunted by any risks involved. As the Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam publicly noted, Jean Marc was vital in developing financial services on the island. In Ramgoolam’s words, ‘Jean Marc has always been sensitive to people’s grief in a world where business and finance seem to be distinct from human distress...He will be remembered as a man who was particularly attentive to poverty’. Under Jean Marc’s guidance, DCDM gained a presence in over 10 African countries.

In the 1990s, Jean Marc would revisit Netherhall to bring his son, Jason, and stated that he wanted Jason to receive what he himself had received during his time in the residence, namely study, a homely atmosphere and the opportunity to strengthen his faith. Jason was to far outstrip his father in terms of how long he stayed at Netherhall – some six years or so. Different generations, but with exactly the same spirit prevailing in Netherhall, a dynamic lived out by several ‘father and son’ teams in recent times. He wanted to put back into Netherhall what he himself had gained, and we have always been most grateful for his encouragement and support.

jean marc at dinner with neil, peter, and his wife and son 28 netherhall news

Always a big-hearted person, I was given a very warm welcome at Jean Marc’s home on my visit to Mauritius. A somewhat amusing incident I recall was when Jean Marc and his youngest brother – Bishop Alain – took me swimming in Rodrigues and I had to borrow swimming trunks from someone who was rather larger than me. And then he tested my nerves when Jason took us all out at 60 mph on his speed boat to go snorkelling! It brought out some of Jean Marc’s best descriptive expressions!

Jean Marc came to London to receive treatment but died at University College Hospital at the age of 66 on Thursday 12th May. Upon hearing of his death, Prime Minister Ramgoolam said that Jean Marc was a ‘kind-hearted man who promoted Mauritian expertise abroad and contributed to the development of the country,’ adding, ‘Mauritius has lost a true patriot and a great man.’ It was fitting that the funeral could take place in the Church of St.Thomas More, Swiss Cottage, the Church entrusted to Opus Dei and looked after by priests from Netherhall; a Church which, in the 1960s, Jean Marc would have attended from time to time when he was staying at Netherhall. A very moving farewell to a giant of a man.

With both father and son having Netherhall as their ‘secondhome’ over many years, there are so many who have very fond memories and perhaps will only get to know the sad news of his death when they read this here. Hopefully it will be an occasion to remember him. We will miss him a lot, and our sympathy goes to Marilyn, his children Jason, Marc and Nathalie, and to all his family.

membered michael farmer a former resident who became the best legal mind in wales

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etherhall alumnus His Honour Judge Michael Farmer died on April 9th aged 66. Described by fellow judge Derek Halbert as the ‘best legal mind in Wales’, Farmer took silk in 1995 after two decades of legal practice and served as a judge on the Welsh circuit from 2001. One of the small number of judges fluent in Welsh, Farmer worked tirelessly to ensure that those involved in legal proceedings could conduct cases in the language.

Farmer was honoured to read a bidding prayer in Welsh during the Papal visit in September 2010. In the week following his death, there were minute’s silences across courts.

Contemporary and former resident Fr. Bernard Marsh writes: ‘Mike was a real character in Netherhall. Doing his Bar Finals, he was a few years older than most of us. His direct manner instilled a certain fear and respect for him among his fellow residents, already presaging, perhaps, his figure at the Bar. But behind the hard exterior was a heart of gold. Those who got to know him better would find a warm and benevolent man, ready to be a deep and loyal friend.

‘I recall travelling with him by air to Rome for Holy Week in the early 1970s. It was a wonderful chance to get to know Mike better. On take-off he closed his eyes and took hold of me, telling me not to worry, it was simply that he suffered from vertigo. I was struck by the humility and simplicity of this confession - after which he went on to recount several previous adventures of his days in Netherhall, which perhaps could also in some way be referred to as a ‘confession’.

‘It might have been on this occasion - or perhaps another - when he confessed that the person to whom he could often be heard speaking to on the telephone in melodious Welsh was in fact replying in English - not sharing his ardent zeal for the language of the bards!’

Our condolences go out to his wife, Olwen, and two children, both of whom practise the law at their father’s old chambers.

This article mixes details from the Daily Telegraph and the Flintshire Chronicle with personal reminsences from former Netherhall director Fr. Bernard Marsh

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a year in pictures a pictorial review of netherhall highlights from the year just gone

above: holden on the roof. the band performed here several times this year left: ricard rovirosa and oscar alabau playing onstage in netherhall below: football on primrose hill continues to be a regular house activity

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above, l-r: edouard michon, miguel anton, ricard rovirosa, ryszard kaleta, quique requero, aymeric mellet, simon jared on a house ski trip in december 2010

left: netherhall news managing editor luke wilkinson and his fiancee lorna colter got engaged on easter saturday netherhall news 31

our warmest congratulations to resident sam lepley, who was baptised in the netherhall oratory on saturday 28th may. sam, from st albans, hertfordshire, has just finished a degree in marketing at king’s college london, and now begins a job in the human resources department of goldman sachs

celebrating the pope’s visit to the uk: the netherhall contingent at the papal mass for the beatification of john henry newman in birmingham, september 2010

coming up

paris reunion! friday 4th november. aperitif at garnelles and dinner at la poule au pot. contact peter brown for more details 32 netherhall news