KIRKUS REVIEWS | Quotes from Review of "Oxford College Arms" and Notes

The following will appear on the front and back covers of the next edition of Oxford College Arms:

Front: “Marlin meticulously covers each college, … its unique history, … its coat of arms, and its specific educational mission. —Kirkus Reviews

Back: Unfailingly clear language, and the entire work is as rationally organized as it is informative. For those in search of a confident guide to these meaningful hieroglyphics, it would be difficult to find one superior to Marlin’s effort. An astute exploration of Oxford’s coats of arms.”—Kirkus Reviews

For notes on, and an index to, the book, go to:

https://theoxbridgepursuivant.blogspot.com/2018/08/oxford-college-arms-end-notes-and-photo.html

OXFORD COLLEGE ARMS | Kirkus Reviews It!

May 1, 2020—The following enthusiastic review of Oxford College Arms was just issued by New York-based (since 1933) Kirkus Reviews: 

“Marlin meticulously covers each college, discussing its unique history, the meaning of its coat of arms, and its specific educational mission. 

"Each coat of arms is loaded with nearly esoteric symbolic meanings, and the author expertly interprets—to borrow an apt coinage from Richard Lofthouse’s preface—the “peculiar language of heraldry.” … 

"The author’s descriptions are composed in unfailingly clear language, and the entire work is as rationally organized as it is informative. This idiosyncratic slice of history actually opens an intriguing portal into the whole of British history since the heraldic symbols signify what should be praised as well as what should be condemned. … 

"[F]or those in search of a confident guide to these meaningful hieroglyphics, it would be difficult to find one superior to Marlin’s effort. An astute exploration of Oxford’s coats of arms.”

Here is the review in its entirety:

OXFORD COLLEGE ARMS | Review in QUAD "Off the Shelf"

Richard Lofthouse in "Off the Shelf", QUAD, 4 September 2018

https://bit.ly/2xwNizA

Imminently available to order is John Tepper Marlin’s Oxford College Arms (Boissevain Books, 2018. £15). If you ever wondered what your college coat of arms means, and where it came from,  here is the answer.

The heraldic expert in our midst and distinguished former Chief Economist for New York City and of course Oxford alum (Trinity, 1962),  John delves into every college coat of arms while a heraldic glossary provides valuable guidance to those uninitiated by the formal language used to describe coats of arms.

When he wrote about this subject for the Michaelmas, 2015 issue of Oxford Today, John explained that even late 20th century colleges scrambled to establish coats of arms. Not out of vanity and not even to flog scarves and trinkets to eager parents. No,  they fell into the tradition in order to have a sustainable identity in the broader context of a collegiate university, particularly on sports field and river.

As such the book is a delight because John has taken recent images to journalistically nail his theme. In one instance a Mansfield wall hosts a perfectly recreated, chalk-rendered coat of arms, alongside the results from rowing Torpids in 2015.

Whether or not any generation of students really thinks about their coat of arms, and I suspect most of us blanked it,  John’s point is that we enthusiastically embrace it as the token of belonging to a particular community. This is so strong that modern arguments to ditch coats of arms have come to nought.

[The author is speaking at the Oxford Reunion on Saturday 15 September. The book is on sale at Blackwell's.]

OXFORD ALUMNI | Oxford Today Magazine

The last Trinity 2017 Issue

An article on Oxford Today appears in Wikipedia. It deserves a wider distribution. It is a pity that the print magazine has disappeared.

At Harvard the alumni magazine is kept alive. It is somewhat independent of the university because of alumni contributions.

The Oxford Today website is still up. It had four news posts in August 2017, and since then has had about one per month since then. 

I am reposting here the Wikipedia entry, unedited except for dropping the many footnotes:

Oxford Today: The University Magazine was a magazine for the alumni of Oxford University. Oxford Today was a magazine distributed free to around 160,000 alumni around the world. It appeared three times a year, with the issues coinciding with the three Oxford academic terms of Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity. The editor was Dr Richard Lofthouse, and it was published by Future plc on behalf of the University of Oxford.

Articles covered subjects such as current affairs, history, literature, as well as the University itself. Contributors and interviewees had included many Oxford alumni from different walks of life, such as the politician Michael Heseltine, the author and playwright Alan Bennett and the comedian Terry Jones of Monty Python fame.

The magazine was previously published by Wiley-Blackwell. In April 2010, it was reported that a new publisher would be taking over the magazine, resulting in the job of then-current editor Greg Neale being placed under review; this caused concern among members of the publication's editorial review board, some of whom expressed the view that the Oxford administration was seeking to reduce the magazine's independence.

The magazine was published by FuturePlus, a division of Future Publishing Limited, on behalf of the University of Oxford. After a review of the magazine and its mounting costs, Oxford University took the decision to close the publication with its last issue published in Trinity 2017.