the Pembrokian
ISSUE42, ISSUE 42, JULY JULY 2017 2017
MMON GROUND W O C ! OR JCR KE N O I RT T A O N I FE T S LL E D
BROKE’S ARCH B I S H ` PEM OP
MIG R AT I O N E
M
W O
ON CAUSE AND GRATI I EFFE M F O CT MA E N I C
TO
SMIGRATION WH TRAN A T L ON IES ATI GR MI
B E NE A T H?
PAST EVENTS
FUTURE EVENTS 2017
Annual Alumni Dinner September 2016
London Reception November 2016
Oxford Alumni Weekend 15th-17th September 2017 Pembroke Annual Dinner 16th September 2017 Pembroke on The Sofa, The Frontline Club, London 5th October 2017 The London Reception, Saatchi Gallery, London 7th November 2017
Lord Krebs, Annual London Lecture March 2017
Hong Kong Alumni Reception March 2017
2018 Annual London Lecture (TBC) March 2018 April Gaudy (2007-2011) 7th April 2018 June Gaudy (1958 Golden Jubilee & 1968 Diamond Jubilee) 22nd June 2018 out the year.
JCR Art Exhibition (70th Anniversary)
April 2017
Gaudy (up to 1957) April 2017
Garden Party
Annual Fund Series
May 2017
THE PEMBROKIAN 2
June 2017
CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Hello, and welcome to this year’s Pembrokian. As ever, we have a magazine packed with all-things-Pembroke for your summer reading pleasure. As in previous years, I’ve structured the content around a loose theme: this year the features all centre around the idea of migration. I freely admit I’ve taken the concept and run with it in each and every direction but, as I’ve thought about these pieces whilst putting the magazine together, I’ve realised they all take on the sense of how living things are in a constant state of flux, of journeying, of moving. From Tim Crosland’s (1988) fascinating interview in which he considers the impact of climate change on the movement of people and its subsequent effect on our political discourse (p4), to Lord John Krebs’ (1963) piece championing the house martin as his most-welcomed annual garden visitor in the back page ‘Highly Recommended’ slot. Current DPhil student,Valentina Ippolito (2013) shares insight into her research and introduces Aldo Iuliano’s Penalty, a short film on the exploitation of migrants (p8); on p12 Roz Kaveney (1968) has generously contributed her poem, Transmigration, which presents her perspective on changing (or migrating) gender; Claire Petros (2008) describes her work in the Maldives as a turtle vet for a charity attempting to prevent the devastating effects of the subaqueous migration of fishing equipment on sea life (p14), and Mike Martin (2001) writes about his experience with the Army in Helmand and also his later world travels on p18. Alumnus and Emeritus Fellow, John Platt (1956), has contributed a piece on John Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury (1745), p7, which reveals Moore’s role in the early establishment of the Episcopal Church, as migrants to America sought to eliminate the monarch from their worship. On pages 10-12 Professor of the History of English, and Fellow and Tutor at Pembroke, Lynda Mugglestone writes on our – arguably – most famous alumnus, Samuel Johnson, and migration in language. We also feature Joseph Owen, Pembroke Fellow in Modern History, elected in 1900 on p20: Oldham millworker Owen’s ‘journey’ to Pembroke after leaving school aged 11 demonstrates the transformative effect of education. His Fellowship is now championed during our annual Access Week in August. Finally, author and alumna Katie Hickman (1979) braves our quick-fire questions on p22. I sincerely hope The Pembrokian offers something of interest to you all, and I welcome your feedback each year. Have a wonderful summer. Sophie
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CAUSE AND EFFECT An interview with Tim Crosland (1988)
PEMBROKE’S ARCHBISHOP UNCOVERED by The Revd Dr John Platt (1956)
PEMBROKE COLLEGE AND CINEMA OF MIGRATION by Valentina Ippolito (2013)
MIGRATIONEM g MIGRATION: HOW ‘OVERSEAS TALK’ BECAME MOTHER TONGUE by Professor Lynda Mugglestone
TRANSMIGRATION by Roz Kaveney (1968)
WHAT LIES BENEATH?
An interview with Dr Claire Petros (2008)
DESTINATION JCR!
FINDING COMMON GROUND
An interview with Dr Mike Martin (2001)
FROM WORKER TO FELLOW: THE STORY OF JOSEPH OWEN
@PEMBROKE
Featuring Katie Hickman (1979)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by Lord Krebs (1963)
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CAUSE AND EFFECT From Hume to Humanitarian
An interview with TIM CROSLAND Tim Crosland (1988) graduated from Pembroke with a degree in Classics followed by an LLM in International Human Rights and Environmental Law at Utrecht University. He has worked in private practice and as a legal adviser to the UK's National Crime Agency, where he focused on the international legal framework for cybercrime. Between 2012 and 2014 he led the Commonwealth Cybercrime THE PEMBROKIAN 4
Initiative (CCI) an international consortium of governments, international organisations, private sector companies and NGOs, providing capacity building support to developing countries in tackling cybercrime. Tim is now Director of Plan B, a charitable organisation established to support strategic legal action against climate change. It seeks to ensure that those responsible for greenhouse gas emissions bear the costs of loss and damage, and thereby increase the incentive for investment in clean technologies.
The impact of climate change on the issue of migration is not overly reported in the mainstream media. Can you explain briefly how it manifests? Humankind has been around for about 200,000 years. For the vast majority of that time, people were nomadic, migrating in search of food and water. Civilisation only emerged around 12,000 years ago when the agricultural revolution made possible settled communities and specialist skills. It’s significant that this coincided with a time of climatic stability – an essential condition for agriculture and hence, civilisation. That stability is now collapsing at an unprecedented rate. We are heading for
2017
GLOBAL WARMING
MASS FLOODING AND DISAPPEARANCE OF WATER SOURCES
REDUCTION IN AGRICULTURE
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
MASS MIGRATION AND OVERCROWDING
MASS DEATH
warming of at least 3-4˚C in the course of this century, temperatures last seen on the planet 25 million years ago (long before any human species walked the earth).
In an earlier conversation you described a ‘chain of impact’ from climate change to the rise of populism. Can you elaborate?
The worst drought in Syria’s history between 2007 and 2011 – caused by climate change – made farming impossible for many, driving millions of Syrians from the rural areas into Damascus. This was at a time when Damascus was simultaneously dealing with an influx of refugees from Iraq, displaced by war. Researchers from Columbia University have concluded that, exacerbating existing stresses, this was a significant cause of civil war in Syria. Climate change is largely responsible for the disappearance of Lake Chad, the main source of fresh water for 20 million people in Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon. Millions have been forced to migrate as a result, many of them driven into the arms of Boko Haram, the terrorist organisation operating in Northern Nigeria.
People once assumed that when the symptoms of climate change started to manifest, governments would be forced to act with the necessary urgency. Tragically the opposite appears to be true: climate change remains – for most – a hidden cause, and attention focuses elsewhere. When climate change causes the displacement of millions of people, it is difficult not to see serious issues associated with having top oil men in senior political positions. Further, the leaders of some countries with economic dependency on fossil fuels show little appetite for tough action on climate change, instead supporting political movements that threaten to undermine it.
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It is difficult not to see serious issues associated with having top oil men in senior political positions.
Right now, for the first time since anyone can remember, there is a very real possibility of four famines – in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen – breaking out at once, endangering more than 20 million lives. As more and more regions of the world become uninhabitable, driving conflict over resources, it is clear that more and more people will be forced to migrate, further destabilising international politics and security.
To simplify: climate change is causing increasing waves of human displacement, which fuel a populist politics that are antithetical to rational, strategic thought, and the co-ordinated global action required to address the immense challenges we face. Is there a particular aspect (regarding climate change) which is most persuasive when negotiating? That’s an interesting one. There’s a school of thought that dominates establishment circles which focuses on the idea: ‘No-one is ever motivated by bad news’. It’s difficult to live on a daily basis with the overwhelming gravity of the situation, so those working on climate change often focus on the small victories … ‘The price of solar coming down! That great new initiative in Sweden!’ etc.
2060
The difficulty with this approach is that members of the public infer that everything is more or less ok, and there is then no mandate for politicians to take the urgent action required. Most people are concerned by the future they’re leaving for the next generation (or at least the thought of a comfortable retirement). Many scientists believe we’re on course for warming of 4˚C by 2060 or so. Here’s what Kevin Anderson, a leading climate scientist at the UK’s Tyndall Centre, and adviser to HMG, says about the implications of that: 'We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it's extremely unlikely that we wouldn't have mass death at 4°C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4°C, 5°C or 6°C, you might have half a billion people surviving'. (see image above) On a sunny day in Pembroke such an apocalyptic scenario can seem remote (or so overwhelming that one simply represses the thought of it). Nevertheless, for me the most important negotiating tactic is to get accurate information out there regarding the implications of the scientific consensus. What, realistically, can be done to prevent further damage? If the situation were completely hopeless it wouldn’t be so painful. But it’s not quite hopeless. With the right legal and regulatory framework in place, market forces could still be harnessed to secure a transition of clean energy in time. Models are still telling us it’s
Continued >> THE PEMBROKIAN 5
possible (just) to avoid 1.5˚C or 2˚C warming with urgent and radical action but not if governments around the world continue to subsidise fossil fuels which, simply put, is directly jeopardising our future. With politics in disarray, we need an alternative approach. The fundamental purpose of the law is to prevent conduct that harms others or society as a whole. For some time there was an idea that ‘if everyone is responsible for climate change, then no-one is responsible.’ But that doesn’t wash. There are very specific actors, both companies and governments, who understand what is happening with climate change and are in a position to do something about it, but choose not to for their own political or economic benefit. Once they are held legally responsible for their actions (and this is already starting to happen) things can change fast. Already, courts in the Netherlands, the US and Pakistan have demanded that governments take more radical action: ‘make the polluter pay’.
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The fundamental purpose of the law is to prevent conduct that harms others or society as a whole.
Your charity is called Plan B – what is Plan A, or has that ship sailed? Scientists have established carbon ‘budgets’ consistent with avoiding the most dangerous effects of climate change. Plan A was that governments find a way to distribute that collective budget between themselves. That’s what happened successfully in the 1980s to address the threat to the ozone layer from the chlorofluorocarbons that were used in refrigeration. Despite nearly a quarter of a century of negotiations, governments have failed to negotiate a division of the pie. Consequently the world is running catastrophically over budget. Plan B, as I mentioned, is to enforce rational, evidencebased action through the courts. Your ‘route’ has been interesting. From Literae Humaniores at Pembroke, to your present role heading Plan B, via the National Crime Agency (NCA). How and why have you made the choices that led to this career path? Studying Hume on causation was definitely the start! I’ve been attempting to maintain the same level of intellectual stimulation ever since! Law enforcement might not have been an obvious choice, but following the gilded path of public school, Pembroke and the Bar, I felt there was something I needed to break free from, and whatever that was I definitely escaped it during my time with the police – no better way to understand the inertia of bureaucracies and the tribalism of politics. THE PEMBROKIAN 6
Global effects of extreme weather conditions
I spent the last couple of years at NCA working a lot in Africa, and it was there that I came face to face with some of the direct impacts of climate change (in Kenya and Nigeria). It seemed obvious that traditional national security type work was pretty pointless if we were simultaneously driving international insecurity through rendering large parts of the world uninhabitable. Plan B is about getting on and doing what I believe needs to be done, outside of any ‘food chain obedience’.
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On a sunny day in Pembroke such an apocalyptic scenario can seem remote (or so overwhelming that one simply represses the thought of it).
What are your personal goals? And what is next for you? After a number of different work relationships, I feel like I have finally settled down. My goal is simple: to do everything I possibly can to support a rational, evidencebased response to the climate crisis, helping to advance an international movement of legal action. Ideally, I fulfil it in time to re-read some Hume.
More information is available at www.planb.earth and Tim can be contacted on tim@planb.earth
Pembroke’s Archbishop
UNCOVERED In April this year it was reported that a secret crypt had been discovered beneath the deconsecrated medieval church of St Mary-at-Lambeth. For those unfamiliar with this part of London, the church is next to Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.The crypt contained the remains of five Archbishops of the see, dating from the period 1610-1805. One in particular is of special interest to Pembrokians: John Moore, Archbishop 1783-1805, is the only one of our alumni ever to hold the position as Primate of All England. Nigel Aston, the author of Moore’s entry in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, characterises his subject’s primacy as “steady and cautious, with the defence of orthodoxy as its main hallmark”. Not only was this to prove efficacious when he was faced with the challenge of migrants to America desiring separation from the Church of England and its binding ties to the Crown in the wake of the Revolutionary War, but it was also to prove vital to his own journey in becoming head of the Anglican community.
THE REVEREND JOHN PLATT (1956) Emeritus Fellow
A native of Gloucester, Moore’s education there was virtually identical to that of the great evangelist, George Whitefield, who had preceded him at Pembroke by a dozen years. The son of a grazier and butcher, Moore attended the Crypt School where he obtained a Townsend Scholarship to the College and matriculated in March 1744. Under the terms of this award, the scholarship was to be held for eight years, the last four of which were to be spent in the study of Divinity. The story has it that an accidental encounter was the beginning of Moore’s fortunes. Whilst on a visit to Blenheim Palace, the Savilian Professor of Geometry, Nathaniel Bliss – a Pembroke graduate and future Astronomer Royal – was asked by the second Duke of Malborough to recommend a governor for his two sons. Whilst Bliss was pondering the request, his fellow Pembrokian, John Moore, was seen strolling in the park, whereupon the Professor immediately pointed him out to the Duke as the man for the job. At Blenheim, Moore conducted himself admirably – not least in refusing the matrimonial advances of the Dowager Duchess! In gratitude, the third Duke settled an annuity of £400 upon him and was instrumental in furthering his ecclesiastical preferment. By 1763 Moore had received canonries at both Durham and Christ Church, Oxford, and – following a direct request by the fourth Duke of Malborough to the King – he became Dean of Canterbury in 1771. Four years later he was consecrated Bishop of Bangor and finally, in 1763, was translated to the see of Canterbury. At the outset of his primacy, Moore was faced with the situation of American Anglicans. The War of Independence had some pretty catastrophic consequences for these American members of the Church of England since their clergy were now forbidden from taking the oath of allegiance to the King as Supreme Governor. A critical issue was the provision of an independent episcopate. Moore initially got around this by approving the consecration in 1784 of Samuel Seabury as the first American bishop by non-juring Scottish bishops. Thereafter, following the passage of the Consecration of
St-Mary-at-Lambeth
John Moore (1730 -1805) by George Romney Bishops Abroad Act in 1786, Moore, together with his fellow primate, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells, were able to consecrate William White and Samuel Provost as Bishops of Philadelphia and New York respectively. In 1789 the US Protestant Episcopal Church formally separated from the Church of England, thus removing any obligation to accept the royal supremacy. It did, of course, remain in full communion with this mother church, and in 1790, Moore and the two other bishops consecrated a fourth US bishop, James Madison. To present a complete picture of his prelacy, his support of missionary activity must be mentioned. Further, he was a keen exponent of the Sunday School movement – which may well have been stimulated by the fact that its founder, Robert Raikes, was a citizen of his native city, Gloucester. These, too, formed a crucial aspect of his governance. Nigel Aston concludes that “Moore’s administrative competence, astute patronage, and impeccable orthodoxy made him many friends and few enemies.” Moore died at Lambeth Palace in January 1805 after some months of senility, and was buried in Lambeth church after a ceremonial funeral.
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Pembroke College and
CINEMA OF MIGRATION
by VALENTINA IPPOLITO (2013)
In keeping with our foundational focus on human rights issues, in May 2016 the Pembroke Film Masterclass Series committee invited Italian director Aldo Iuliano for a discussion of his short film on migration, Penalty. The film combines three elements: migration, football, and the language of film. As a project it aims to stimulate reflection on human nature, transcending nationality or group membership. In the film, human traffickers divide a group of African refugees into two teams and force them at gunpoint to play a game of football to determine which side get places on a boat to freedom – an opportunity for which all have nevertheless previously paid. The film portrays not only murder, but exploitation of labour and the desecration of human bodies. It suggests that the question of migration is more relevant than ever at a time when the old equilibrium of Western societies seems tenuous in the face of challenges posed by the future – and it implies that our collective treatment of the vulnerable may be the central moral question of our time. This has been borne out in the year since the Masterclass Series screening, as issues related to migration have dominated public discourse: war and refugee crises in Syria, Sudan, and Yemen; famine in Somalia; the spectre of terrorism in Europe; the UK’s determination THE PEMBROKIAN 8
to exit the European Union, with immigration as a core concern. Meanwhile Penalty has demonstrated the universality of its core concept, by continuing to connect with audiences, playing at festivals worldwide and winning awards at a variety of international film venues, including Best Short Film at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.
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The film combines three elements: migration, football, and the language of film. As a project it aims to stimulate reflection on human nature, transcending nationality or group membership.
Serban, common themes emerge – themes that connect their films to work of other directors depicting migration (including Iuliano): the physical dangers that stalk migrants; their struggles in destination societies, where their appearance stokes local fears of competition over employment, benefits, and education; and the difficulties of spouses and children left behind in communities of origin.
The panel at Pembroke (L-R: Iuliano, Spoletini, Ippolito) I was initially keen to bring Iuliano to Pembroke, because the subject of his film overlaps with my own research, which deals in microcosm with the way art mediates the social phenomena of migration. Specifically, I analyse cinematic representation of the trauma of migration from Romania to Italy. In deconstructing the film language of Italian directors like Federico Bondi and Francesco Munzi, and Romanian directors Cristian Mungiu, Bobby Paunescu, and Florian
Many such social issues are associated also with immigration to the UK, resulting in stories which are being written before our eyes. The Brexit vote has already influenced immigration to the UK, for example, with the broadsheet press reporting in April that net migration to the UK was down by over 84,000 in 2016, a fall widely linked to the outcome of the vote. These figures represent individuals and families making decisions not
only about where they want to live and work, but also about where they see the greatest hope for economic and social security and their children’s futures. UK immigration totals experienced the most dramatic fall from Eastern European countries granted freedom of movement in 2011, including Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Meanwhile, this depression was partly offset by a rise in immigration from Bulgaria and Romania (countries granted freedom of movement in 2014) as net immigration from these countries rose from 16,000 to 64,000. This caught my eye, given my research interest in Romania. I found it telling that Romanians have persisted in their desire to seek a better life in Britain despite many signs of official institutional discouragement. Their journey to the UK is a voyage into uncertainty, with the UK government unwilling yet to guarantee the right to remain of the millions of Europeans already in residence, let alone that of new arrivals.
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It suggests that the question of migration is more relevant than ever at a time when the old equilibrium of Western societies seems tenuous in the face of challenges posed by the future.
At the Masterclass, Iuliano shared with the Pembroke audience his first-hand experience of migration to Europe, as seen from the vantage of his home in Crotone, Calabria – at the toe of Italy’s boot. Crotone is the site of the First-Reception Centre of Santa Anna, one of the largest immigration complexes in Europe. In Iuliano’s words: ‘Along the streets that lead to the St Anne Centre […] up to the town centre, where I live, I have seen the queues of migrants increase, and every morning they set out, wandering around the city: jobless, hoping for a better tomorrow.’ He went on to describe the personal friendships he formed with migrants and asylum-seekers in Crotone; these relationships and the stories his new friends shared with him motivated him to make Penalty. In fact, all of the football players in the film are themselves asylum seekers. The film’s editor, Marco Spoletini, joined Iuliano at Pembroke. Spoletini is a long-time collaborator of Matteo Garrone, director of films including the globally honoured Gomorrah which was nominated for both the Palm d’Or and Grand Prix at Cannes 2008, and won Spoletini the David di Donatello Award for Best Editing. Listening to his passion for the Penalty project, it struck me again that the issue of migration is one that touches all of us, directly or indirectly. It has the power to
Iuliano on the shoot of Penalty
attract a talent like Spoletini’s, whose name was made editing wide-release features, to work on a short film with a trenchant message. Sociologists and demographers will continue to offer useful statistics about population density and migratory flows, but it will remain up to journalists and artists to help us connect to the stories and the human costs behind the numbers. As Iuliano did in his home city of Crotone, today there are writers, videographers, and filmmakers working to capture the story of migration to and away from Britain in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Whether these stories, as they emerge, have the power to effect change – in our hearts, our communities, and ultimately, if we unite, in our governmental policies – is up to each of us.
Valentina Ippolito (2013) is currently reading for her DPhil at Pembroke. The Pembroke Film Masterclass Series, founded by Valentina and run by the MCR, brings together students, academics, film critics and aficionados to celebrate the art of cinema. The Masterclass Series is grateful to all donors of The Annual Fund, who have the supported the Masterclass since it was founded in 2015.
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Photo: ‘Book on Table’ by Alex Brown
By Professor of the History of English, LYNDA MUGGLESTONE ‘Migration’, wrote Samuel Johnson, could be a kind of ‘fever’, reaching, at its extremes, an ‘epidemickal fury’ by which the inhabitants of one region seek to gain a new homeland in another. In his Dictionary of 1755 migration appears simply as ‘the act of changing place’ - a less impassioned definition. Perhaps appropriately, migration is itself a migrant in the world of words, if one that was already well-established and fully naturalised when Johnson wrote. As the OED confirms, migracion had made its own way into English, courtesy of French as well as Latin, by 1527. English was – and remains – full of relocalisations of this kind. If we take Johnson’s own lifetime (1709-1784) as one sample of the wide-ranging migratory patterns that words reveal, there are some 2,820 importations from Latin and over 1,200 from French. Italian yields almost 300 more (many in relation to music) while Greek provides another 500. English, as Johnson notes in the ‘Preface’ to his Dictionary, was - as a living language - continually ‘budding and falling away’. Nevertheless, as Johnson also reminds us, migrating, or the act of movement, is rarely the end of the story. If some words are naturalised or fully assimilated into the native population, others (such as tête-à-tête) continue in what Johnson describes as ‘the state of aliens’, characterised – then as now – by a sense of otherness, a status marked by the non-native diacritics, or pronunciation, or forms they continue to possess.
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remember that words cannot move of their own volition but must somehow be brought into contact with the native language. ‘Need’ and the argument that the migrant words of language history might perform roles that the native language seems to lack is, for instance, often used in the act of bringing words ‘over the border’. The writer George Puttenham hence produced a soundly reasoned defense for giving lexical citizenship to politician, a ‘word received from the Frenchmen’ but ‘withoute an English word to match him’. In a similar way, surely encyclopedia had immense benefits over the English circumlocution of ‘all maner of lernying; whiche of some is called the worlde of science: of other the circle of doctrine, whiche is in one worde of greeke Encyclopedia’, as the Renaissance scholar Thomas Elyot likewise argued. In both cases, speakers of the language clearly agreed. Other imported words can nevertheless prove residents of the most temporary kind. If acersecomick – a word meaning ‘one whose hair has never been cut’ – appears in a number of Renaissance dictionaries, it failed to yield any evidence of its actual usage - perhaps unsurprisingly given its limited range of application. Henry Cockeram’s
Dictionarie of 1623 has a wide range of lexical curios of this kind (see, for instance, the Latinate adolescenturate, explained as ‘To play the boy, or foole’, or advesperate, ‘to wax night’). Intriguing, too, is adstupiate – a word explained as ‘greatly to esteeme riches’. If such words are potentially ‘englyshed’ – in the sense that they are placed in an English wordbook, and given an English form and definition – they transparently fail to gain wider currency. ‘Need’ can be double-edged. Use and assimilation depends, like other contested matters, on the ‘will of the people’. Continued >>
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Other imported words can...prove residents of the most temporary kind. If acersecomick – a word meaning ‘one whose hair has never been cut’ – appears in a number of Renaissance dictionaries, it failed to yield any evidence of its actual usage...
a i n e a t a m i s adstupfy ruse bicep paedia o i l s c l y a c f n s s e i u t e ax f e t a a r t e o p u s e q a t o adv an u q o t e v i c i t r u t poli -àn e c s e l o e d t a ê t s m u u c u o n f e i t t on notes ucleus tê English, ascJohnson ur m in the ‘Preface’ to his n a r e Dictionary, was – as m ca a living language – continually ‘budding and s u c o f falling away’. s u n m alu
Earlier periods can show even greater evidence of this ‘epidemickal fury’ for resettlement. According to the kind of lexical census which the OED now provides, over seventy per cent of the vocabulary potentially changed during the English Renaissance. Perhaps predictably, migration and anxiety have a long history in this as well as other respects, as have associated ideas of citizenship and naturalisation, patriotism and proper English. Unlike non-metaphorical acts of migration, we need, of course, to
Samuel Johnson, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, c1772 THE PEMBROKIAN 11
In ways that also resonate with later concerns, the scale – as well as the nature – of lexical migration can prompt anxieties of various kinds. How many migrants were enough – or too many? Was what was described as ‘English Italianated’ or ‘French English’ really ‘English’, as the Preface to the first English dictionary queried in 1604? How much ‘overseas talk’ or ‘outlandish’ English could appear before the native language was subsumed within a newly configured sea of words? As here, migration can be seen as dangerous - able to erode the identity of the native tongue. ‘If too many Foreign Words are pour’d in upon us, it looks as if they were design’d not to assist the Natives, but to Conquer them’, as the poet John Dryden observed in 1697. The danger was plain; language might exhibit a kind of invasion by stealth. ‘Nations that live promiscuously, under the Power and Laws of Conquest, do seldom escape the loss of their Language with their Liberties’, Sir Thomas Browne, another Pembroke alumnus, warned. The perceived ironies of importation could be marked. ‘When we have won Battels which may be described in our own Language’, as Joseph Addison (essayist, playwright, poet and politician) later demanded – here in the context of an actual war – why are ‘our Papers filled with so many unintelligible Exploits, and the French obliged to lend us a Part of their Tongue before we can know how they are Conquered?’. Had English gained or lost expressiveness as a result of migration? Fears that the native language might be overrun to such an extent that parents no longer understood their children, or that the fundamental communicative role of language might be thwarted, appear in a wide range of texts.
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Migration can be seen as dangerous - able to erode the identity of the native tongue. ‘If too many Foreign Words are pour’d in upon us, it looks as if they were design’d not to assist the Natives, but to Conquer them.’
Borders – and border-crossings – can, in related ways, provide a clear locus of resistance. ‘Toleration, adoption and naturalisation have run their lengths’, Lord Chesterfield, Johnson’s patron for much of the Dictionary, decreed in 1754, suggesting that it was time for processes of this kind to come to an end. In the model of language he proposed, the Dictionary (with Johnson as ‘dictator’) might, in effect, construct a metaphorical wall, deterring the processes of admission and assimilation alike, as well as providing a mechanism by which the linguistic THE PEMBROKIAN 12
credentials of arrivals and departures might be checked before admission. Language narratives of this kind provide other precedents of the urge to take back control, to reclaim a particular model of the nation state, or to resist forms of change which may, for whatever reason, be deemed undesirable.
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As Johnson repeatedly reminds us...what we might desire and what we know to be true of language are not necessarily the same: ‘Change in language is as much superior to human resistance as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide’.
Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 is nevertheless, as we might expect, a complex document. It can indeed offer resistance - Johnson’s personal dislike of ruse (‘A French word neither elegant nor necessary’) is clear, even as he provides evidence for its use in English. Yet any perceived ‘lust of innovation’ can receive short shrift. Dryden’s attempted importation of falsify in the sense ‘To pierce; to run through’ in his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid is a case in point. ‘Why am I forbidden to borrow from the Italian, a polish’d language, the word which is wanting in my Native Tongue?’, Dryden had demanded. Johnson, in the Dictionary, provides an answer. Usage - and the language of the people, not the autocracy of the individual writer - was, Johnson emphasised, the prime consideration. If Dryden’s lengthy argument is reproduced, its outcome remained unchanged. Given ‘all this effort’, Dryden, as Johnson notes, was ‘not able to naturalise the new signification’. ‘I have’, he added, ‘never seen [it] copied, except once by some obscure nameless writer’. The will of the people again remained triumphant. Falsify, as Johnson demonstrates, already existed in a range of meanings which, for speakers and writers, had long been established. As Johnson repeatedly reminds us therefore, what we might desire and what we know to be true of language are not necessarily the same ‘Change in language is as much superior to human resistance as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide’, his 1755 ‘Preface’ states, casting his erstwhile patron’s proffered dictatorship aside. Controlling the borders can, in this respect, be depicted as a particularly problematic act. If the Académie Française had attempted – via its own dictionary – to serve as linguistic border control, ‘guard[ing] the avenues’ in order ‘to retain fugitives and repulse invaders’, the results were not encouraging. Such ‘vigilance
Frontispiece for Johnson’s Dictionary and activity have hitherto been in vain’, Johnson confirmed. Successive editions of the Dictionnaire had been forced to respond to language and its changes, not the other way round. Then, as now, ‘intruders’ made their way into usage, irrespective of the rights of passage which might be given or denied. In similar ways, the outcome for Johnson’s disfavoured ruse was clear; here, too, the border had already been crossed and the ‘intruder’ was settling in. Across the Dictionary, a range of similar processes is in evidence. As Johnson explores, the flux of words from elsewhere is governed by processes of assimilation in which, while some migrant words are ‘fully naturalised’, others have - at least ‘as yet’, he notes merely begun the possible cline of change. Migration remains a pattern of on-going change governed not by rule or committee or, indeed, by individual edict or predilection, but by the wider democracy of speakers and the words they choose to use.
Lynda Mugglestone was elected to a Fellowship at Pembroke in 1989. A prolific writer and researcher, her interests focus on three main issues: the history of the spoken language, especially in the nineteenth century; metalexicography and the cultural, social and linguistic history of dictionaries; and finally, language change and WW1. In addition to her books, she has published numerous articles, reviews and podcasts, as well as making regular appearances on BBC radio. Her most recent book, Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words, was published in 2015 and her project focusing on the intersections of language and history in examining language change in WW1 can be found at: wordsinwartime.wordpress.com
TRANSMIGRATION by Roz Kaveney (1968) Do not arrive or leave. This new found land The same old flesh though metamorphosis Feels like a journey and perhaps it is Traced on new softer skin by nervous hand And travels daily just to stay in place Emolliating fragile burned out hair. A rutter charted by the clothes you wear The shifting planes and contours of your face Can feel like setting foot upon the shore Longed for as exile took a pilgrim’s staff Delayed so long you weep and then you laugh At pain so deep it salves a lifetime’s sore Paint subtle face or heart, we long and burn To home we never saw but now return
Roz Kaveney is a poet, novelist and cultural commentator living in London.While still presenting as male, she attended Pembroke between 1968 and 1973. In 2015 Roz received the Lambda Literary Award for Tiny Pieces of Skull, a novel
about trans street life and bar life in London and Chicago written thirty years ago but published only this century. Her work Dialectic of the Flesh was also shortlisted for the prize in 2012. In 2012 her fantasy novel, Rituals - Rhapsody
of Blood, was shortlisted for the IAFA William L Crawford Fantasy and James Tiptree Jr Awards. Her latest collection of poetry, Waking into Dream is being crowdfunded.Visit www.unbound.com/ books/waking-into-dream for more.
THE PEMBROKIAN 13 THE PEMBROKIAN 13
WHAT LIES
BENEATH? TURTLES, GHOST GEAR AND LIFE UNDER THE SEA
An interview with DR CLAIRE PETROS Dr Claire Petros (2008) left Pembroke with a degree in Biological Sciences and went on to the University of Bristol to qualify as a veterinary surgeon. She is now working as a sea turtle vet in the Maldives with local charity,The Olive Ridley Project.
How did you end up working with turtles in the Maldives? I have always loved travel and seeing exotic wildlife, so I was hopeful that my working life would take me abroad. After graduating from Pembroke I studied at Bristol Veterinary School and spent my final year elective in North Carolina State University following Dr Greg Lewbart, an expert in reptile and fish medicine. He encouraged me to pursue a career working with turtles. After graduation I volunteered as a
research assistant in Grenada for the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDESCAST). It was there that my ambition to become a ‘turtle vet’ and marine wildlife conservationist became an achievable dream.
‘
The detrimental effects of ghost nets can be felt far from their point of origin; they can float in ocean currents for years or even decades, travelling huge distances. Caught in the net
THE PEMBROKIAN 15
Can you tell us a little about the charity you are working for? The project is a UK-based charity that predominately works within the Maldives but also has a sister project in Pakistan. We are partnered with the Coco Collection Resort in Dhuni Kolhu and the charity’s mission is to reduce ghost gear within the Indian Ocean to a non-detectable level. We are doing this by physically removing ghost nets from the ocean, educating local fishers about the effect that these lost nets have on wildlife, increasing the awareness of this problem and by providing a marine turtle rescue centre in the Maldives to treat the injured turtles. Not many people are fortunate enough to find their dream job straight out of university! I am really enjoying my time with the Olive Ridley Project and look forward to being part of its development.
‘
A turtle can exert enough force to break its own bones and the extent of their injuries suggest that turtles may suffer for weeks before dying or being rescued.
What are ghost nets, and what threat do they pose? Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been discarded, abandoned or lost in the ocean. The detrimental effects of ghost nets can be felt far from their point of origin; they can float in ocean currents for years or even decades, travelling huge distances. The nets
are mostly made from synthetic materials and so exist in the seas for years, continually entangling wildlife. Turtles are particularly affected as they often use these floating islands for basking or for an easy meal, as smaller animals such as fish and crabs can be entangled, too. During the process of trying to eat the fish caught in the nets, the turtles become entrapped and as they struggle to escape they end up doing more damage. A turtle can exert enough force to break its own bones and the extent of the injuries suggest that turtles may suffer for weeks before dying or being rescued. Is it possible to assess the scale of ghost gear migration? Our lead scientist, Jillian Hudgins, runs the citizen science project online which receives data from anyone who finds a ghost net. It
is possible to tell which fisheries made the nets and which region they were lost in by measuring nets in use and comparing the nets we find to those measurements. The data also can give us an indication of how many nets are being lost: the current information from the UN suggests that over 640,000 tonnes of ghost nets are being lost annually, which is equivalent to the weight of 160,000 African elephants! Using nets in the Maldives is actually prohibited by law, and they use the traditional sustainable method of pole and line fishing. This means that, sadly, the nets that end up in their waters have drifted in from further afield. What is your role? I am the veterinarian for the Marine Turtle Rescue Centre. At the centre I am responsible for the daily maintenance for the turtle
Continued >>
+640,000 TONNES OF GHOST NETS LOST ANNUALLY THE EQUIVALENT WEIGHT OF...
160,000
ELEPHANTS
Ghost gear
Estimated UN statistics on global ghost net loss THE PEMBROKIAN 16
What are the future plans for the charity?
patients and provide medical care for those requiring treatment. If a turtle comes in with a severe injury to their flippers due to entanglement in ghost gear, I perform surgery to treat the flipper or, if necessary, amputate. Most turtles that arrive are severely dehydrated and malnourished, so most receive fluid therapy and antibiotics treatment.
‘
The charity is currently in its infancy, with its charity status established last year, having been in the making since 2013 by our founder, Martin Stelfox. The centre itself opened for its first patients in February, and we are currently improving the veterinary clinic with new equipment; ideally we would love to have an anaesthetic and x-ray machine, for example.
We have a lecture series that is being followed up with trips to the centre so that the children have a chance to meet our patients.
I am available for advice on any turtles found in the Maldives that may require treatment and how best to get them to our island if necessary, and I communicate with the other rehabilitation centres to find out where best to send them to. I am also involved with teaching at some of the schools in nearby local islands. We have a lecture series that is being followed up with trips to the centre so that the children have a chance to meet our patients. At the resort, I provide a lecture for the guests once a week, to educate and spread awareness of our project. What in your experience of being away from home has felt the most foreign? The most enjoyable - and difficult - thing to get used to is commuting via seaplane. Upon arrival at the international airport in Male, I was whisked away to the seaplane terminal, and saw a fleet of small floating planes which I knew would take me to my island. I have flown in them over twenty times
We are planning on opening a second clinic at another Coco Collection resort and are looking to hire another vet for this centre. We will also be employing more local interns to learn how to care for sea turtles.
Claire with a rescued turtle now and the novelty does not wear off! On several occasions I have looked down to see huge pods of dolphins only a short distance beneath the plane, and on one special flight recently I saw a few manta rays feeding on the surface. I certainly don’t miss the District Line, that’s for sure!
‘
The most enjoyable - and difficult - thing to get used to is commuting via seaplane. On several occasions I have looked down to see huge pods of dolphins only a short distance beneath the plane...I certainly don’t miss the District Line, that’s for sure!
This summer, we are starting our volunteer programme so that anyone who has an interest in working with sea turtles and learning more about them can come to the island and gain hands-on experience working with these incredible animals. And for you? I have recently agreed to become the lead veterinarian for the charity and will be returning to the Maldives next year for the peak season of entangled turtles. For the summer, I will be returning home to further develop my veterinary skills in the UK and am planning a trip to America in the autumn to visit other turtle rescue centres. I also hope to help increase the current veterinary care within the Maldives - for a while I was the only vet in the country! I would love to be a part of a growing veterinary healthcare network, and hopefully will be able to further assist the Ministry and their new vet in this capacity in the future. www.oliveridleyproject.org
Claire feeding a patient.
THE PEMBROKIAN 17
Desti
io nat n
JCR!
A VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF OUR UNDERGRADUATE POPULATION, ORDERED BY COUNTRY OF BIRTH
59
54% of students were born in the UK
Almost half of our current students were born in another country, from Australia to Zimbabwe! We are so proud of our international and inclusive community and here’s the evidence showing that students migrate to Pembroke from each and every continent – with the exception of Antartica, obviously. J
26 39
53
46
Europe totals 71%, so the greatest percentage of students are from Europe, then Asia, North America, Australia, Africa and lastly South America with just 1% of students coming from this continent.
16
EUROPE
36
71%
20
4 19
Germany 4.4%
33
52
2 28
10%
22
7 25
27
10
China 5%
14
47
USA
58 40
9%
32
50
38
6
17
62
42
29
21 55 61 43
34
18
35 11
30
5 41 23
13
1%
14%
45
56
60
Percentages have been rounded up/ down to nearest number for clarity.
ASIA
49
12
Italy 3% 31
SOUTH AMERICA
3
15
54
NORTH AMERICA
8
44
48
AFRICA
2%
24
3%
1
Australia
2%
51
9
OCEANIA
37
ANTARCTICA 0% EUROPE
AFRICA CODE COUNTRY
18 32 38 50 51 62
Egypt Libya Nigeria Somalia South Africa Zimbabwe
ASIA 5 10 21 23 24 25 27
Bhutan China Hong Kong India Indonesia Iraq Israel
CODE COUNTRY
29 30 31 34 40 41 43 47 48 55 58 61
Japan Korea Republic of (South) Lebanon Malaysia Oman Pakistan Philippines Saudi Arabia Singapore Thailand United Arab Emirates Vietnam
CODE COUNTRY
2 3 4 7 12 14 15 16 19 20 22 26 28 33
Austria Belarus Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark France Germany Hungary Ireland Italy Luxemborg
N. AMERICA CODE COUNTRY
36 39 44 45 46 49 52 53 54 56 57 59
Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Russia (Russian Federation) Slovakia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom
CODE COUNTRY
8 13 35 60
Canada Cuba Mexico USA
OCEANIA 1 37
Australia New Zealand
S. AMERICA
6 9 11 17 42
Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador THE PEMBROKIAN THE PEMBROKIAN 18 18 Peru
FINDING COMMON GROUND Mike chatting with Helmandis
An interview with
DR MIKE MARTIN Dr Mike Martin (2001) is a former British Army officer who pioneered, designed and implemented the British Military’s Cultural Advisor Programme in Afghanistan. Since leaving the army in 2012, Mike worked in Somalia and Burma/Myanmar for a risk management company as Research Director, and is currently working as the Chief Operating Officer for Common Purpose, a not-for-profit global leadership development programme. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London (KCL).
THE PEMBROKIAN 19
His first book, the critically acclaimed, An Intimate War (Hurst/OUP) provides an oral history of the conflict in Helmand as seen through the eyes of the Helmandis. His second, Crossing the Congo, recounts his adventures crossing the Congo River basin in a 1960s Land Rover. He is currently conducting research into the cognitive basis of warfare in humans, and this forms the basis for his third book, Why We Fight, to be published in 2018.
How did you go from studying Biological Sciences at Pembroke to pioneering and implementing the British Military’s Cultural Advisor Programme in Afghanistan? After Pembroke, I spent three years travelling, and lived in France, Argentina, and Venezuela, learning French and Spanish. Once I had come back to London, I hadn’t had enough and still wanted a job that involved language and travel: the army beckoned and offered to teach me Pushtu - it was a choice of Arabic, Dari or Pushtu, and I thought Pushtu would open some strange doors to me that the others wouldn’t. Through a lucky series of events, I found myself in the right place at the right time, and ended up devising a new role for the British military that helped them use linguists to understand Afghan tribal
society, and use that information to nuance their operations. It seemed to catch the attention of the generals and they sent me back out there to set it up; there is now a unit continuing that work worldwide with no further input from me. What inspired you to create the Programme? Before I went to Afghanistan, I had vague ideas that we (the British, the Coalition) were good at what we were doing out there, based on little more than our national self-narrative. When I got there I was utterly appalled at the poor levels of knowledge we had, and how we were really blundering about there, not knowing what we were doing. Helmandis were running rings around us, and we were so poorly informed that we didn’t even realise that we were being manipulated. This was a very strong motivation: war is basically about communicating with violence, and our understanding was so limited we were sending messages, the meaning of which we were unaware.
‘
You can’t understand anywhere, or anything, without speaking the language... your mind changes when you learn a foreign language.
We see a common language as a passport to other countries – what elements of the Programme were critical in forging relationships in a foreign land? The entire premise of this programme was language.You can’t understand anywhere, or anything, without speaking the language. This is a question of understanding hard facts, but also your mind changes when you learn a foreign language, and the neurones wire up in a way sympathetic to the ways and nuances of that country (apologies if any of my biology tutors are reading that non-scientific explanation!). An easy example is the position of an individual with respect to the group, and
vice versa: you never really understand these nuances until you speak the language, because you project your own ‘language-concept-lens’ onto what they are saying. What surprised you most about this programme? How factionalised the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Department for International Development (DFID) were on our side. You would never know that we were fighting a war, the amount of infighting that went on. It verged on the criminal. Looking back, I suppose that it is what happens when you send people to war without clear aims – their careers and turf wars take over. One will only really put the mission in front of one’s advancement if the mission is clear, articulated and worth risking life for.
You’ve driven an old landrover across the Congo (also another book, Crossing the Congo: Over Land and Water in a Hard Place). Where does this wanderlust come from? Good question. I’m not really sure… I think that ‘normal’ life seems a bit boring, and that getting out there and doing something is the best way to understand yourself, and to understand other people. It is a great shame that the world is becoming a very dangerous place at the moment, making it hard to go some places - but I don’t intend for that to stop me. We had plenty of scrapes in the Congo – from guns being stuck in our faces to random arrests by ‘officials’ (in reality militias) – but it is in those moments when you learn about how life is for most people on the planet, and a little more about yourself.
Can you tell us why you were inspired to write An Intimate War, your first book?
What, in your experience, are the constants – the elements common to all countries/people?
Later on, in the army, the MOD funded me to do a PhD on the conflict in Helmand. I did hundreds of interviews in Pushtu and told the Helmandi story of the war. Inspiration came from the simple fact that no-one else was telling this story – almost all voices about Afghanistan are western ones, and so there is a serious misrepresentation of the country. Needless to say, if you ask loads of Afghans what they think of the British, you end up with a result that you might not like if you are the UK MOD. I published the PhD as a book, and the MOD tried to ban it (poorly, with the wrong arguments), which helped it get front page and prime time coverage. It wasn’t their finest hour, but was a microcosm of the incompetence displayed throughout.
This sounds trite, but people are people and there is a huge amount more common ground than there are divisions. I have found that this even extends to humour, something that people think is highly culturally specific. I have found that one particular type of humour – political satire, or laughing at people in power, with a roll of the eyes – that works everywhere! It seems that we all have to put up with idiots in charge. Where are you most at home? Reading a book, or writing, at my home in Stepney.
Your forthcoming book, Why We Fight: The Cognitive Basis for War revisits your original degree at Pembroke. Why and how did that come about? After An Intimate War came out, and after working in some other conflicts post-army, I was still unsatisfied in the way that the media, politicians, and conflict scholars represent conflict. It did not seem to match my lived experience of combat. Through a Visiting Fellowship at KCL I looked into this, and realised that it all came back to biology, psychology and, of course, evolution. Why We Fight is about how our minds have evolved to form groups and fight other groups, and it has been a wonderful revisiting of my first intellectual home, Biology. There is some interest internationally, I am pleased to say, and it will come out in 2018.
‘Crossing the Congo’
Why We Fight, to be published 2018
THE PEMBROKIAN 20
FROM WORKER TO FELLOW THE STORY OF JOSEPH OWEN
Next year will mark ten years since the launch of Pembroke’s farreaching initiative to widen access to top-tier universities, undertaken by Dr Peter Claus, now Access Fellow. Far-reaching because of the refusal to compromise on standards of attainment; because instead of assuming Oxford’s mystique added to its reputation, the programme attempted to demystify the process; and because the content was not centred on vocational degree courses. Peter’s vision has now been developed through ‘Hub’ schools in the North West of England and London, and is reaping dividends in admissions, but his approach was not original: the University has long concerned itself with encouraging the brightest minds (regardless of social position) to blossom within its honeyed walls and closed colleges. His concept – establishing a local centre for learning, and ensuring a rigorous and unashamedly academic approach to study, culminating in a summer school held in Oxford – was not unique but loosely based on the Oxford Extension Lectures of the late nineteenth century. The lectures were the work of a group of Dons, largely from Balliol, but with peculiar resonance for Pembroke as the scheme was responsible for bringing Joseph Owen – Fellow in Modern History – to the College.
Joseph Owen was elected to the Fellowship at Pembroke College at the very start of the twentieth century in 1900. His route was unconventional. Born in Lancashire in 1871, Owen matriculated at Balliol in 1895 and despite the tragic death of his young wife Emma, just before Finals, he graduated with a First Class degree in History, much supported by the network of friends he and his wife had built during their four years together. But this is not why Owen’s route was different to most. What made him stand out amongst his fellow Scholars at this time was his background, and his class. In the Balliol College Register Joseph Owen’s previous educational establishment is listed as Public Elementary School, Oldham: his years of work in the mills around Oldham were not noted. Owen came to Oxford via University Extension, programmes which resulted from a perfect storm of progressive social liberalism, a burgeoning sense of connection between education and social change, and the growth of the Victorian railway network. In the 1850s and 1860s Victorian England was concerned with reforming elementary, secondary and public schools and this was enshrined through the 1869 Endowed Schools and the 1870 (Elementary) Education Acts. This caused some concern within the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge: if they were not seen to embrace the new spirit of political and social reform, would change would be thrust upon them and threaten their ‘cultural centrality’ (Dons and Workers, Goldman, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1995)? The idea of what came to be known as ‘University Extension’ arguably started with James Stuart (Trinity, Cambridge), who travelled to the North of England to offer a series of lectures in conjunction with the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women. The initiative was originally conceived to offer education to the women of the middle classes but it soon became apparent that there was a demand, too, from working class men to attend lectures and develop their own learning. This was a movement all of a piece with the founding of Ruskin Hall in Oxford in 1899 (later Ruskin College where Peter Claus attended as a student) and the Workers Education Association (WEA) in 1904, which also focused on education for those who were all but excluded from university. Stuart’s programme was concurrent with reform taking place in Oxford and Cambridge: external pressure saw the Universities encouraged (forced?) to modernise – intercollegiate study was to become more
Oxford Rail Station THE PEMBROKIAN 21
DR PETER CLAUS, Access Fellow
commonplace, the condition of celibacy was removed from Fellows, competition for fellowships was encouraged, and research was championed. Consideration of the social composition of the fellowship formed a part of this rush to effect change at a structural level. One early supporter who would affect external reform by changing Oxford from the inside was Benjamin Jowett, Fellow and Tutor at Balliol. He predicted that a more open system of entrance would benefit the clergy and provide for better school masters. His influence was far reaching - he was elected Master of Balliol in 1870 and was instrumental among a group of Dons from that college who sought to open Oxford to those from other classes, cultures, countries and religions. By the mid-1880s the University was working in collaboration with local groups (as Pembroke does now) to organise, plan and administer ‘extension lectures’ at local centres across the country. It did wonders for the Oxford ‘brand’: social conscience and academic excellence met, and it was found that students recruited from diverse backgrounds drove up standards, not compromised them. Within a decade Oxford was ‘extending’ to reach over 20,000 students, including middle class women and working class young men. Oxford’s Dons set out from Oxford to travel by train from centre to centre. Lecturers were put up by local branches of the extension committee and would undertake weekly or fortnightly circuits. It was through attending a series of lectures that Joseph Owen started his migratory route from mill worker to Oxford Don, and also from working class to middle class. Born to Edwin and Alice Owen in 1871, Joseph was one of six siblings. His father died of heart failure when Joseph was five years old. According to data gathered in the 1881 and
1891 censuses, Alice raised her children alone and did not remarry. We know that Joseph attended school for a brief period, and it isn’t too much of a stretch to speculate that for Joseph to have spent any longer at his studies would have been simply unimaginable: an impossible dream, despite the recent emergence of Working Men’s Colleges in centres including Wolverhampton, Salford and, of course, the London Working Men’s College (founded in 1854). Instead, he left school at eleven to work in a local cotton mill. However, Joseph was one of those workers attending lectures given through the Oxford Extension by clergyman and lecturer, George William Hudson Shaw. It was he who recognised Joseph’s aptitude. Hudson Shaw, together with the Modern History Tutor at Balliol, A L Smith, arranged for Joseph, together with his new bride Emma, to come to Oxford in 1895. Not having learned Latin or Greek (both essential requirements for entrance to Oxford at that time), Joseph had to be coached for Responsions (known as ‘LittleGo’), the University Entrance examination. He excelled, and was subsequently awarded the Manchester-derived Brackenbury History Scholarship at Balliol, where he went on to take a First four years after arriving in Oxford. The following year he was elected to the Fellowship at Pembroke, where he stayed for eight years. Parallels with the present Access and Outreach models are clear to see: no dumbing down, no lowering of academic standards, but instead taking the ethos and teaching of the University out to those whose life would not bring them into the sphere of Oxford and all it can offer. Twenty years ago – or 21 to be precise – ‘Education Education Education’ became a slogan and took on a political meaning, but the idea of education being a route to social equality is not so new.
With thanks to Stephanie Jenkins for providing the old postcards of Oxford
University Extension ‘centres’ were dotted up and down the country: bringing education to the powerless; life chances to working class men and middle class women in towns and cities remote from Oxford. It was a movement that transformed Oxford and transformed lives such as Joseph Owen’s. When he was appointed as a History Fellow at Pembroke, both the New York Times and The Kentuckian reported this extraordinary achievement. He left Pembroke in 1908, returning to Oldham where he was to spend a long and useful career in the schools inspectorate and adult education – remarrying with two children, retiring in 1932 and passing away in the early 1950s when in his eighties. His letter to the then Master, John Mitchinson (1833 – 1918), who was born in Durham, can be found in the College archive, and a cup that he had engraved in gratitude to Pembroke is now brought out once a year for the formal Joseph Owen Dinner during Access Week in August. Bringing together pupils from London, the North West, the North East, the United States and rural India, this is a week when we think long and hard about talents such as Owen that we miss still; those that in the words of the poet John Betjeman may be ‘..lost potential firsts in some less favoured towns’.
Cup presented by Joseph Owen to Pembroke’s Master
THE PEMBROKIAN 22
‘ALTERNATIVE’ FACTS?
How much can 140 characters reveal? We’ve borrowed the format for our quick-fire interview with Katie, with only one [thread] allowed!
This Spring we ran a campaign featuring some alternative facts about Pembroke. How much do you know about your College – can you spot the true facts?
@Pembroke Oxford Home or away? @PindarDiamond I've spent my life travelling but nothing gives me greater pleasure than sitting in my garden at dawn, smelling the jasmine and the roses
@Pembroke Oxford Wife or courtesan? @PindarDiamond I alternate...
@Pembroke Oxford Facts or Fiction?
Katie Hickman @PindarDiamond Katie Hickman (1979) started her career as a travel writer. Her first book, Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon tells of her journey across Bhutan on horseback. Her works have included the best-selling history books, Daughters of Britannia and Courtesans and she was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year for her first novel, The Quetzal Summer.Her most recent book, The House at Bishopsgate, which was published by Bloomsbury in February of this year, is the third in a trilogy. Her books have been translated into 20 languages.
@PindarDiamond Facts. They are infinitely stranger than anything I could make up.
Our Twitter account now has over 4,500 followers and features pictures and news from around College. Follow us @PembrokeOxford for your regular fix of Pembroke news.
@
@PindarDiamond [THREAD] (1/4) There are times when being a tourist is the only way to go. In 1982 I went to Albania, then still under Hoxa's deeply communist rule, on a (2/4)Thomas Cook Tour, which was the only way into the country at the time, as independent travellers were forbidden. There were no cars, and (3/4) almost nothing in the shops, but the people were wonderful. I would always rather immerse myself in 'ordinary life' – whatever it (4/4) takes – than see the big sights. I have a special fondness for department stores. Particularly good in China, by the way. @Pembroke Oxford Inspiration comes from past, present or future?
@PindarDiamond The future. I am always dreaming about new projects.
THE PEMBROKIAN 23
A Pembroke alumnus has a Mars crater named after them. Samuel Johnson’s love for cats led to a Porter tripping on one of them and breaking his leg.
For the Council’s approval to build Pembroke’s bridge in 2011, Freemen of the City are now legally entitled to use it to lead cattle during summer. Pembroke’s McGowin Library has a book bound in elephant skin. In 1909, two undergraduates dressed as bishops blessed a meal at the Broadgates Club from which all 14 diners later suffered chronic food poisoning.
PEMBROKE
@Pembroke Oxford Traveller or Tourist? Discuss.
Tolkien modelled Gandalf on Frederick Homes Dudden, Master of the College.
Up until World War II, Pembroke College only had one bathroom. Pembroke was the first College to use sliding seats in its boats. Professor X from Marvel Comics is a Pembrokian. In 1763, anatomy classes at Pembroke were abandoned after complaints from Fellow and scholars of “bodyes fforeigne in the soupe cauldron”. Carry On actor Charles Hawtrey came up in 1934 but soon withdrew to pursue a career in acting. In the 1920s, undergraduates launched fireworks from Chapel Quad which landed in four different colleges, sending a bowler hat flying from the head of a Christ Church porter.
If you missed this on Twitter, and want to check the answers, visit: www.pmb.ox.ac.uk/alumni/annualfund/12-week-challenge
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: With such a wealth of successful, informed, expert alumni, we dedicate the back page to an expert recommendation, between friends…
LORD (JOHN) KREBS The Lord Krebs, Kt, MA, DPhil, FRS, FMedSci, Hon DSc matriculated as John Krebs (1963) for his BA in Zoology. With research interests in ecology and bird behaviour, he subsequently held posts at the University of British Columbia, University of Wales and Oxford University. From 2007-2015 he was Principal of Jesus College Oxford. Lord Krebs was knighted in 1999 and appointed as a cross bencher in the House of Lords in 2007. He was the first Chairman of the UK Food Standards Agency (2000-2005) and a member of the Committee on Climate Change, and Chairman of its Adaptation Sub-Committee (2009-2017). Who better to ask for a recommendation on which avian visitor to look out for in our gardens this summer?
They arrived back, as usual, during the last week in April. With their compact body and forked tail, pointed, swept-back wings, blue-black back and distinctive white underparts and rump, house martins are readily distinguished from their relatives, the swallow. I like to think that my house martins, and their mud cup nest under the gable end by the front door of our modern end-ofterrace house in Jericho, add value to the property. However, I accept that the regular accumulation of droppings by the front door and on the window-sills, together with the chirping of the babies in the nest might not be to everyone’s taste. By the early autumn, my house martins, and their young, will be heading south to spend the winter in Africa. No-one knows exactly whereabouts in Africa they go, or which route they take to get there. But from research on other migratory bird species, we have found out a considerable amount about the how, why, when and where of bird migration. About half of 570-odd species of birds that are found in the UK migrate, mostly heading south in the winter, although some of our winter visitors, such as fieldfares, redwings and waxwings, come to us from more northerly parts. The habit of migration probably stems from the last ice age: as the ice sheet over
northern Europe retreated, birds gradually followed, seeking to benefit from newly available feeding grounds.Viewed in this way, it could be said that the birds’ wintering grounds in the South are their real home and that they pop up North to breed, taking advantage of the seasonal flush of insects and other food in the spring and early summer.
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We know that many species undertake journeys of thousands of miles, including crossing the Sahara desert, and navigate with great precision.
From a combination of recapturing wild birds fitted with tiny metal leg rings, experiments with captive birds and more recently with the use of satellite tracking, we know that many species undertake journeys of thousands of miles, including crossing the Sahara desert, and navigate with great precision. They are able to use the sun, the stars and the earth’s magnetic field as compasses to choose the correct heading. But they also need some kind of map to tell them where they are on the earth’s surface. This still remains a mystery, but my house martins are able to find their way from Africa back to their same Oxford house year after year, and all of this with a brain weighing less than a gram!
THE PEMBROKIAN 24
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