The university is all around

ON October 6, soon after French writer Annie Ernaux’s Nobel Prize was announced, a group of women friends and I walked down to King’s Arms to celebrate. More than 400 years old, King’s Arms is Oxford’s oldest pub. Like many good things in this university town, it is owned by one of the colleges. Graham Greene met Kim Philby and others for drinks here in 1944. An apocryphal story suggests that radical suffragettes set fire to the pub’s back room over a 100 years ago, protesting against the university’s reluctance to admit women students. Another story says that the fire was more recent, sparked off by the pub’s refusal to admit women to the back room—known as the Don’s Room—until 1973. The truth is perhaps more mundane, such as an electrical fault.

October 6 has a special significance in Oxford’s history. It was the day on which, 102 years ago, the university finally started admitting women. The 900-year-old university had certainly taken its time.

Afterwards, we walked across to Blackwell’s bookshop on Broad Street to buy Ernaux’s books. The bookshop staffer went to check where the books were: he wasn’t sure whether they were in the fiction or non-fiction shelves. This is a feature of her deeply autobiographical narratives, which are hard to classify in conventional terms. Another staffer came to talk to us about her work: “Fiction, non-fiction?” he smiled. “If you ask me, there is no such thing as non-fiction.”

And that makes for just one more great story about Blackwell’s, which is a part of both Oxford history and literary history. I can imagine J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch, and others browsing here as students. The story goes that in the 1930s, when Basil Blackwell hosted a tea party for publishers in his garden, Allen Lane got the idea for Penguin Books.

A short walk away is that other great Oxford institution—the “Bod”, or the Bodleian Library. This is actually a network of 28 libraries containing 13 million items, most of which are stored underground. The Bodleian is also a library of legal deposit, which means that one copy of every book ever published in England is available here.

As one resident remarked: “Age trumps everything in Oxford.” No wonder then that the town also hosts the oldest public museum in Britain. Founded in 1683, the Ashmolean is Oxford’s great museum of art and archaeology. It was opened with a collection donated by Elias Ashmole, after whom it is named. Today it has among the world’s most enviable collections of Raphael drawings, Egyptian sculpture, modern Chinese paintings, and more. One of the current exhibitions on at the Ashmolean is “Postcards from Home” by Delhi-based artist Manisha Gera Baswani. It presents memories of 47 artists from India and Pakistan about their “lost” home. The introduction to the exhibition notes that Cyril Radcliffe, who drew the boundary lines that partitioned the two nations, was a Fellow of Oxford’s All Souls College.

Oxford at the beginning of Michaelmas term is lovely. The trees are red, gold, and green. Occasionally, a tourist will want to know where the University is. The answer is that the University is all around. Colleges and monuments are scattered around the beautiful city centre, cheek by jowl with shops selling university hoodies and fridge magnets.

On October 5, we were listening to a talk in the Old Library of University Church. A plaque on a wall informed us that it was in the same room, on October 5, 1942, that the Oxford Committee on Famine Relief had held its first meeting.

History is everywhere in Oxford. It is there in the tall, beautiful buildings and what Matthew Arnold called the “dreaming spires”. It is at the corner of Holywell Street where, in the 16th century, a group of Catholics were executed for their faith. It is in the statue of Cecil Rhodes outside Oriel College. And it is in the boss of Mahatma Gandhi on the ceiling of University Church, marking his visit to Oxford in 1931.

Walking tours take you to these landmark sites. There is also one walking tour with a difference: Uncomfortable Oxford, a social enterprise started by two doctoral students that raises awareness about problematic aspects of the university’s past, involving its trysts with colonialism and gender, class, and racial inequality.

1. Commonly made out of polypropylene or polystyrene (also paper and other materials), this object is characterised by an angle-adjustable bellows segment. It relies on a particular muscular action and atmospheric pressure to function effectively. What am I talking about?

2. Contrary to popular belief, they were not made out of wood. Throughout his life, George Washington employed human, cow, horse, and possibly elephant variants of what?

3. An example of a non-newtonian fluid, it falls under the pseudoplastic subcategory, characterised by “apparent viscosity which decreases with increased stress”. In simpler words, the more you shake it, the more

“liquid” it gets. What is it?

4. According to an ancient ritual, when Greek children, especially girls, came of age, it was customary to perform a particular “sacrifice”. The ritual usually took place on the eve of the girl’s wedding day. What did it entail?

5. This American poet (also painter, essayist, author, and playwright) used distinct line breaks, lower case lettering, and parentheses to create a distinct image for the poems. Name the poet.

6. Confusion between the words “typeface” and “font” (the latter meaning various styles of a single typeface) occurred in 1984 when X mislabelled typefaces as fonts. This error has been perpetuated throughout the computer industry, leading to a common misuse of the term. Name X.

7. What do these various interpretations apply to? • Copenhagen interpretation

• Many-worlds interpretation and consistent histories • Ensemble interpretation

• Transactional interpretation

• Relational interpretation

8. Traditionally called the Planter’s Chair, the Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable describes it “as an Anglo-indian term meaning a wicker chair with an extended footrest that’s long enough to facilitate sexual intercourse”. What is the alternative term this type of chair is now generally known by?

9. When asked for an example of a popular use of his invention that he would never have predicted, his answer was “kittens”. Who am I talking about and what did he invent? 10. A philatelist collects stamps. What does a phillumenist collect?

11. What town was Leonardo da Vinci from?

12. Anil Seth, a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience, said: “Science and art have long realised that experience depends on the involvement of the experiencer. In art history this is Gombrich’s ‘________’s share’, and in science this traces to Helmholtz’s concept of perception as inference. The shared idea is that our perceptual experience—whether of the world, of ourselves, or of an artwork—depends on the active interpretation of sensory input.” Fill in the blank.