HERALDRY LINKS | Alphabetical

OXFORD COLLEGES AND PPHS
The following are draft sections of a book, © 2018 by Boissevain Books LLC.

All Souls
Balliol College
Blackfriars Hall
Campion Hall

Harris Manchester

Kellogg College (Updated May 12)~

Lady Margaret Hall (a College) (May 19, 2018)~

Linacre (Updated May 13, 2018)~

Lincoln (Updated May 15, 2018)~

Mansfield College (Updated May 13, 2018)~

Oriel College (Updated May 15, 2018)~

Regent's Park College (a PPH) (Updated May 15, 2018)~

St Antony's College (Updated May 12, 2018)~

St Benet's Hall (a PPH) (Updated May 13, 2018)~

St Catherine's (St Catz, Updated May 14, 2018) ~
St Cross (Updated May 16, 2018) ~
St Edmund Hall (a College) (Updated May 16, 2018)~
St Hilda's (May 19, 2018) ~
St Hugh's (May 19,2018)~
St John's (May 20, 2018)

St Peter's (Updated May 16, 2018)~

Trinity (Updated May 15, 2018)~
Wolfson (May 20, 2018)

HERALDIC TOPICS

Beer, Branding and Paul Walton

Coat of Arms v. Crest, reply to Robert Parker (Trinity 1967)
George Washington's Arms and the Stars and Stripes I, Huffington Post

George Washington's Arms and the Stars and Stripes II (Sulgrave)
GW's Arms – Selby or Trinity, Which Is Older? (2018)
Martlets (2018)
Richmond Herald (2018)
Scotsmen Inspired the Patriots (2018)

Simple Heraldry Is Fun

Sinister Questions

Stars in the Oxford College Arms

The Arms of Douglas, Moray and de Vere,

U.S. Arms | The American College of Heraldry (2018)
Visit to the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh (2018)

What's Your Blazon?, article in Oxford Today, 2015
What's Your Blazon? Oxford Heraldry Society Likes

OTHER OXFORD TOPICS
Oxford Birthdays | April
Oxford Birthdays | May
Oxford–The First Seven Centuries (May 16, 2018)
Oxford's Rapid Expansion
Oxford Arms Superlinks . Heraldry Links (Alphabetical)

OXFORD | Historical Calendar

4th Annual NYC Area Oxford-Cambridge
Alumni Boat Race, 2008. Naugatuck Rowing
Club, Westport, Connecticut. Oxford mixed boat.

The following historical calendar of Oxford-college- related events is in formation.

Oxford college connections are noted.

February 
11 – Tolkien Heirs Sue New Line Cinema for $150 Million. 2008, settled 2009. Tolkien attended Exeter, Oxford. Fellow at Merton, Oxford.

April
23 – Baedeker Raids Start. 1942. Oxford was spared. Why, do you suppose?

May
1 – Joseph Heller. 1923. St Catz, Oxford.

July
1 – Hong Kong Returned to China. 1997. Chris Patten, Balliol, Oxford.

August
11 – Laurence Binyon, Poet, born.  1869.  Trinity, Oxford 1888.

September
3 – Stars and Stripes First Flown in Battle. Lawrence Washington, Brasenose, Oxford.

November
9 – Noel Godfrey Chavasse. 1884. Trinity, Oxford. Only person to receive the Victoria Cross with bar in World War I.
24 – St Catherine's Feast Day.  St Catz is named after her and her wheel is in the college arms.

BIRTH: May 1–Joseph Heller (St Catz)

Joseph Heller (1923-1999) of St Catz, Oxford

This day was born in 1923 Joseph Heller, in Brooklyn, NY. The title of his best-known work, Catch-22 (1961), described a Kafkaesque vicious circle in which the choices offered are absurd.

Catch-22 is about an American World War II bombardier named John Yossarian, who tries to get out of the Army but finds out slowly that his options are all bad.

Heller himself enlisted in the U.S. Army at 19 and was sent to Italy as a bombardier during World II, where he flew more than 60 missions. He kept a detailed diary, in which he wrote that war was "fun in the beginning" because you feel "something glorious about it," but  endured several harrowing episodes that he used in Catch-22.

After his discharge, he became a lifelong activist against war. He attended Columbia and Oxford (St Catz) on the GI Bill. He worked as a copywriter at Time and wrote short stories that appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, and Cosmopolitan.

He said that the opening lines of his novel just came into his head one day:

It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, [Yossarian] fell madly in love with him. 

The book was originally titled Catch-18, but Heller's editor, Robert Gottlieb, discovered that Leon Uris also had a war book coming out the same month as Heller's, entitled Mila 18. Gottlieb and Heller brainstormed which numbers sounded funnier: 11 or 14. They settled on 22.

The book initially received mixed reviews. As the virtues of the book became established, it eventually sold 10 million copies. It is now widely considered a classic of post-war literature.  "Yossarian Lives" bumper stickers appeared on cars and students against the draft wore Army field jackets with John Yossarian name tags. Catch-22 was made into a film (1970) by Mike Nichols and starred Jon Voigt, Orson Welles, and Alan Arkin. Heller also worked as an uncredited scriptwriter for the James Bond film Casino Royale (1967).

Heller took 13 years to write his second novel, Something Happened (1974), which one critic summarized as, "Nothing happens."

When an acquaintance told him in his later writing he had never matched the greatness of Catch-22, he immortally answered:

Who has?

Heller died in 1999. In anticipation of this event, he said once:

Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me.

Comment

I met Heller  couple of times before he died in 1999. He was a centered person who seemed at peace with himself. Not someone you think of as a 50-mission bomber.

In Catch 22 he went beyond the older Hobson's Choice in which the seeming choice turns out to be nonexistent, and painted a picture of a choice that was horrible sentence. It's a world that moves from Kant to Kafka:

• A Hobson's Choice is relatively benign. In one version the stabler offers you a choice of any horse in the stable, when there is only one left–one that everyone else has rejected. The choice is named after a Cambridge (naturally), England innkeeper. In another version of the Hobson's Choice story, the guest is instructed to take the horse "nearest the door".
• In Catch-22 the choice that one would most like is impossible to get. The possible outcomes are all bad. Relative to a Hobson's Choice, think of a situation where one pays in advance for a choice of horse, but instead of finding a horse, at the stable one is kidnapped or robbed.

Catch-22 is a Kafkaesque world where things don't make sense. Hobson's Choice is a simpler problem – we have no choice, if we know what's good for us. In that way, Kant's attempt to derive a  moral imperative from logical premises instead of divine revelation was an attempt to give the human race two avenues to the same horse, i.e., God.