TREATY OF GHENT | 205th Anniversary (Clerihew inside)

A Celebratory Poster of the Treaty, 1814.

Off to Belgium they went,

To work on the Treaty of Ghent.

The Brits wanted uti possidetis

Meaning after-capture status.

The Yanks sought a total recante,

Way back to their status quo ante.

- Clerihew by JT Marlin, 2014

December 24, 2019 – Five years ago, just about the only person who celebrated the 200th Anniversary of the Treaty of Ghent was Oxford University Vice Chancellor Andrew Hamilton, who began his remarks with a reference to it. (Hamilton is now President of New York University.)

The  Treaty of Ghent was formally titled the “Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America.” It was signed on December 24, 1814.

The only American or British newspaper to have acknowledged the anniversary on the date in 2014, as far as I could determine, was the East Hampton Star.

Declaration of War, 1812

The Treaty formally ended a state of war between Britain and the United States. President James Madison initiated a declaration of war on Britain originally because British Orders in Council made it harder for the United States to trade with France.

In addition, the British Navy was seizing (“impressing”) sailors on colonial ships and putting them on Navy ships. The War Hawks in the House of Representatives were calling for war on Britain.

The British Government responded by repealing the Orders in Council, ending the curb on trading. However, impressment remained. If the British had given up the right to impress American sailors, Madison might have called off the war.

Negotiations

Russia's Czar Alexander I in March 1813 offered to host negotiations, but the British were winning and refused. In the fall of 1813, British foreign minister Lord Castlereagh, a Cambridge alum, offered to negotiate directly with the United States. The two countries picked Ghent in eastern Flanders as the venue because it was a neutral city, speaking both Dutch and French. Since the Dutch had settled New York, there were family connections to U.S. officials from that state. The goal of both the British and the United States was to end the fighting, which was far too costly for both countries.

The main issue addressed by the negotiators was how the spoils of war – territories that were captured during the war – would be divided.

The United States wanted all the captured regions back; their negotiating team was led by two Harvard-connected officials. Britain wanted to keep what they had won; their team was led by Oxford and Cambridge men:

• In this corner, for the Stars and Stripes – John Quincy Adams, chief negotiator, a Harvard graduate; Henry Clay, the hawk (the "bad cop"); Albert Gallatin, former Treasury Secretary, who grew up in Geneva, emigrated to the USA and settled south of Pittsburgh, teaching French at Harvard and elsewhere to earn a living before he became Secretary of the Treasury in 1801, remaining in that job until he went to Ghent in 1814; James A. Bayard, moderate anti-war Federalist; and Jonathan Russell, chargé d’affaires for Madison in Paris. It took the Americans six weeks or more to communicate with Washington, D.C. so they were negotiating largely on their own. The U.S. team wanted to restore territory to what it was before the war, the status quo ante bellum. They won.

• In this other corner, for the Union Jack – The central negotiator was a Cambridge graduate. The two senior members were more senior, and Oxonians, but it seems they didn't want to make the trip, thereby prompting the thought the idea that the Oxford men were more talented, but lazier; while Cambridge provided someone with less experience and talent, but more willing to make the effort. (1) The senior team was Lord Castlereagh, Britain's Foreign Secretary and an alumnus of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Henry Lord Bathurst, the Third Earl, Secretary for War and the Colonies and alum of Christ Church, Oxford. However, they stayed in London and did not dignify the talks with their presence. (2) Instead, they sent a less-skilled team: Admiralty lawyer William Adams, impressments expert Admiral Lord Gambier, and the real workhorse of the group, and a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, Henry Goulburn, Undersecretary for War and the Colonies. The British negotiators wanted uti possidetis, that each side could keep what it had won militarily, such as Detroit and Mackinac Island. They lost.

Admiral of the Fleet James Gambier (L, with Treaty) shakes hands
with U.S. Ambassador to Russia and son of the 2nd U.S. President.
John Quincy Adams. British Undersecretary of State for War and
the Colonies Henry Goulburn (R, red folder) and others look on.

The British senior negotiators were far closer to the Treaty signing than the theoretical U.S. decision-makers, but they were not in London. Being closer, in Europe turned out not to have been much of an advantage. The British being close to London meant they felt they needed to send telegrams to get approvals from their superiors.

The Americans in Ghent understood they were too far from Washington to be able to get approval for their strategy. They were thus able to settle on a common goal, and take action on behalf of their country.

The outcome of the Treaty was favorable for the United States, perhaps because the war was going well for the Americans during the month before the Treaty was signed:

• News of two U.S. victories was the last information that negotiators in Ghent received. The Americans seemed to be losing early in the war, with the burning of the U.S. Capitol and other buildings in Washington. But: (1) Lieutenant General Sir George Prévost and a naval squadron under Captain George Downie engaged in Plattsburgh, N.Y., with New York and Vermont militia and U.S. Army regulars, under the command of Brigadier General Alexander Macomb. They were supported by ships commanded by Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough. The British failed to take Lake Champlain and fled north after the battle. (2)  Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Md., withstood a severe attack, inspiring the National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner."  
• The Americans therefore refused to let the British keep what they won. The British did not get what they wanted regarding the independence of Native lands in the state of Ohio, and in the Indiana and Michigan Territories. The British wanted this reserved land to be a buffer state to protect Canada from American annexation, but Clay would not give it up. The British did not get any territory in northern Maine, or demilitarization of the Great Lakes or navigation rights on the Mississippi. Lord Castlereagh asked the Duke of Wellington and his advice was for them to take the status quo ante bellum. 

On December 24 the negotiators agreed on the 3,000-word Treaty. After approval by the two governments, hostilities ended and “all territory, places and possessions whatsoever, taken by either party from the other during the war” were restored to what they were before the war.

Although the United States didn't give up any territory, it had been the one that declared war, so presumably it was bent on expansion. That was not to be, and the Canadian border was left in place, which would have been the consolation for the British. Also, the United States never did get the British to promise not to impress American sailors, but as hostilities in Europe ended, this issue ceased to be such a concern.

The Treaty was signed by the British on December 30, but it took a month for word to get to Washington, D.C. Before the combatants got word of the Treaty, the British attacked New Orleans on January 8, 1815 with a large army. It was overwhelmed by a smaller and less experienced American force under General Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) in the greatest U.S. victory in the war. The news of the Treaty and the outcome of the Battle of New Orleans reached a celebratory American public at about the same time. (However, the Second Battle of Fort Bowyer was won by the British. For them, the news was mixed.)

The United States ratified the treaty in mid-February 1815 under President James Madison, who started it all, with a formal exchange of papers.

Comments

1. The United States won back in the Treaty what it had lost. As the Canadian historian and War of 1812 expert Donald E. Graves concludes:  What Americans lost on the battlefield, "they made up for at the negotiating table.”

2. The Treaty of Ghent has held up for 205 years. However, the Treaty does not imply a  "Special Relationship", just a cessation of hostilities. During the American Civil War, Britain (as Amanda Foreman has shown) came in mostly on the losing side, the South. This makes sense historically. The Pilgrims were led by Cambridge alumni fleeing to New England to avoid religious persecution at the hands of the Church of England. South of New York, however, was populated through friendly grants of land from the Crown to mostly Oxford alumni (Pennsylvania to William Penn of Christ Church, Oxford; Maryland to the Calverts of Trinity College, Oxford; see chart here: https://theoxbridgepursuivant.blogspot.com/2013/06/oxford-alumni-who-shaped-american.html).

3. Hitler brought the United States and Britain together. During World War I, many Irish Catholics opposed U.S. entry on the side of Britain. It was not until World War II that the Special Relationship was cemented. The threat of Hitler tied the United States and Britain, first with Lend-Lease in March 1941 and then with the U.S. declaration of war following the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941.

4. Relations have been good since World War II. Brexit will leave Britain more dependent on its relationship with the United States.

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)

RICHMOND HERALD | Michael Maclagan, 1980-89~

Michael Maclagan (1914-2003),
Richmond Herald (1980-1989)

Michael Maclagan was a major heraldic presence in Oxford as Richmond Herald during the years 1980-89, and was active in this role after his retirement from Trinity College in 1981.

He was previously, from 1948, Slains Poursuivant and, from 1970, Portcullis Poursuivant.

During this time he was consulted frequently on matters of college arms and gave advice to, for example, St Antony's College (https://bit.ly/2muBl8C) and St Hilda's on their arms.

I knew him both as senior tutor at Trinity and as Librarian of the Oxford Union. He chaired the Library Committee, on which I served for a couple of terms.  

I remember having the temerity to oppose purchase of a restaurant guidebook, because it had no entries for Oxford itself. (There were entries for nearby locations.) Maclagan's response was: "I was the consultant for the selection of the Oxford area restaurants. We considered them, on their merits." In the presence of such authority, I withdrew my objection.

Having read some novels where aristocrats were identified as having certain vocations, I once asked Maclagan what the acceptable jobs were for aristocrats, expecting him to say: "architect, barrister, physician..."  Instead, he peered down at me and said: "There are no acceptable jobs for aristocrats." It was clear that he then considered the conversation terminated. He was, of course, enjoying himself immensely.

He once was sent a book to review entitled "The MacLagan Family." He gave it a one-sentence review: "The name Maclagan is spelled with a lower-case L."

Richmond Heralds Since World War II
1943–1961 Sir Anthony Richard Wagner, KCB, KCVO, DLitt, FSA. Author of "Heraldry in England (Penguin, 1946).
1962–1967 Robin Ian Evelyn Milne Stuart de la Lanne-Mirrlees, Esq.
1967–1980 John Philip Brooke Brooke-Little, Esq., CVO, FSA. Author of a two-part series in 1951 on the coats of arms of the Oxford colleges.
1980–1989 Michael Maclagan, Esq., CVO, FSA, FRHistS. 
1989–2010 Patric Dickinson, Esq., LVO
2010–present Clive Edwin Alexander Cheesman, Esq., PhD.

From the Telegraph: Sep 16, 2003

Michael Maclagan, who has died aged 89, was a historian of early medieval England and Byzantium, an eminent authority on genealogy and heraldry, and for more than 40 years a tutor in Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford, where he is remembered for the formidable range of his interests and his elegance and precision.

In the late 1970s, when he gave a series of lectures at Trinity on the Crusades, Maclagan would arrive, punctually, in his gown and mortar board, get out his gold pocket watch, open it and place it carefully – and slightly shakily – on the high lectern, then lecture for the precise time allotted.

He was also a long-serving member of the College of Arms. When taking the train to London for a day at the college, he would often kit himself out in a dark three-piece suit, a shirt with an unusually long 1930s turned-down collar, tie, bowler hat, umbrella and, occasionally, spats. Yet he never looked affected, just very old-fashioned, like a retired Guards officer of an earlier era who had simply never thought to change the way he dressed.

Michael Maclagan was born in London on April 14 1914 into a remarkable Anglo-Scots family which had produced doctors, scholars, clergymen, soldiers and colonial administrators. His father, Sir Eric Maclagan, was for many years director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. His paternal grandfather, William Maclagan, Archbishop of York, had crowned Queen Alexandra in 1902.

…

From Winchester, Maclagan went up, in 1932, to Christ Church, Oxford, where he became president of the Archaeological Society, dabbled in Conservative politics and took a First in History in 1935. It was noted of him at the time: "With equal ease will he discourse to you on Tariff Reform or trace your genealogy from Adam." After two years as a lecturer at Christ Church, he was elected a Fellow of Trinity in 1939.

Commissioned into the TA in 1938, Maclagan served during the war in the 16th/5th Lancers. In the later years of the war, he served in Military Operations in the War Office, where his fluency in Italian and Serbo-Croat helped him plot the course of the Trieste motorised division in the Balkans. He was also able to employ his genealogical talents in compiling a pedigree of the Abyssinian royal houses when planning their Order of Battle.

In 1946 he resumed his duties at Trinity where he filled a succession of offices - dean, librarian, senior tutor, vice-president and wine steward. Although he had a slightly detached, distant air, his students found a kind, courtly man who enjoyed the company of young people and had a keen, dry sense of humour. The travel writer Gavin Young, a former pupil of Maclagan's at Trinity, mentions him with (somewhat uncharacteristic) generosity in his book Slow Boat to China.

Away from college life, Maclagan was a stalwart of the Oxford Union for around 60 years, serving as Senior Librarian and Trustee. He occasionally took part in Union debates, a task he undertook with his customary wit and panache. In 1950, for example, speaking on a motion deploring the fall of the House of Stuart, he suggested that the Stuarts and the Hanoverians were equally immoral and the real question was which of the two royal houses was immoral in a more agreeable way. In 1973, he was to be found debating Women's Liberation with Mary Warnock.

…

Maclagan's imposing figure – he was 6ft 3in tall and held himself ramrod straight – is immortalised in an oil portrait painted of him in his full regalia as Richmond Herald which now hangs in the entrance to Trinity College dining hall. ...

[T]he fine book which he produced with the Czech armorist, Jiri Louda, Lines of Succession (1981), for which he contributed the narrative passages on the various European monarchies, proved to be his last.

Maclagan was sustained by his long and happy second marriage to Jean Garnett, whom he had met during his time at the War Office and married in 1949. At their house in Northmoor Road, north Oxford, the former home of J R R Tolkien, the Maclagans entertained generations of Trinity undergraduate historians with unstinting generosity. …

From The Independent:

The ideal retirement job awaited him at the College of Arms. Heraldry had been an abiding interest from childhood. He was a walking encyclopaedia of armorial knowledge and had an allied taste for state ceremonial. The Princess Royal (married to the Earl of Harewood, his mother's cousin) procured a seat for him at the 1937 Coronation. Later, he acted as a staff officer at the 1953 Coronation and the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969.

Meanwhile, in 1948, he had been made Slains Pursuivant, personal herald to the Countess of Erroll, Lord High Constable of Scotland, an honorific position that he held until his appointment as Portcullis Pursuivant in 1970. Thereafter he regularly donned the colourful garb of a royal herald for ceremonies at Westminster and Windsor.

Promoted to Richmond Herald in 1980, he did not go into professional practice as a herald until his retirement from Trinity the following year. The College of Arms benefited from his scholarship, and for Maclagan it was an agreeable postlude to his academic career.

BIRTHDAYS | Oxonians, November 2017

Oxford Black Alumni Group Formed (2017)

November
09 | Noel Godfrey Chavasse (Trinity) 1884
09 | Francis Chavasse (Trinity and St. Peter's) 1884
15 | William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham* (Trinity) 1708
21 | Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "Q" (Trinity) 1863
29 | C. S. Lewis* (Univ.) 1898
December
18 | Charles Wesley (Ch.Ch.) 1707
22 | James Oglethorpe* (Corpus), 1st Gov. of Georgia 1696
January
03 | J.R.R. Tolkien, CBE (Exeter) 1892
27 | Charles Dodgson, "Lewis Carroll" (Ch.Ch.) 1832
February
13 | Anna Watkins (rower for Cambridge against Oxford), 1983
21 | John Henry Cardinal Newman (Trinity) 1801
21 | W. H. Auden
March
01 John Tepper Marlin (Trinity) 1942 😏

02 Dr Seuss (Lincoln), 1904

11 Rupert Murdoch, 1931
14 Stephen Hawking (Univ), death, 2018 (born in April)
24 William Morris (Exeter), 1834

26 Robert Frost, 1926
26 A. E. Housman, 1859

April
01 Rachel Maddow (Lincoln), 1973
03 Jane Goodall, 1934

April 23. St George's
Day

05 NYC Boat Race Dinner, University Club
13 Frederick Lord North (Trinity), 1732
13 Christopher Hitchens, 1949
14 Michael Maclagan (Ch.Ch. and Trinity), 1914
15 Emma Watson, 1990
15 Joseph Lister, 1827
19 Dudley Moore, 1935
23 St George's Day
28 Harper Lee, 1926
28 Elena Kagan, 1960
May
10 | James Viscount Bryce (Trinity) 1838
20 | Melvin "Dinghy" Young (Trinity), DFC & Bar 1915
29 | Sir Basil "Gaffer" Blackwell (Merton) 1889
June 
04 | Dan Topolski (New) 1945
05 | James Smithson (Pembroke) 1765
16 | Adam Smith (Balliol) 1723
17 | John Wesley (Ch.Ch.) 1703
July
09 | Oliver Sacks, 1933
10 | E. Clerihew Bentley (Merton) 1875
27 | Hilaire Belloc, 1870
28 | Senator Bill Bradley (Worcester) 1943
August
08 | Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (Trinity) 1605
10 | George Goodman, "Adam Smith" (BNC) 1930
11 | Lawrence Binyon (Trinity)
16 | T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) (Jesus) 1888
19 | President Bill Clinton (Univ.)
September
07 | Peter Darrow (Trinity) 1950
October 
02 | Graham Greene, 1904
23 | Denis Woodfield (Lincoln) 1933

*Clerihews for Oxonians

VIEWS | 230K. Top 10 Most-Read Posts in Last Month.

October 18, 2017 – This blog has had 230,000 page views since inception.

Thank you for reading!

The ten most-viewed posts in the last month are shown below, with dates and links.

Post Title and Link, and Date

HITLER: Why Didn't He Bomb Oxford? (24K Views, Sep... Jun 8, 2013, 3 comments

ROWING BLAZERS: Ralph Lauren Launch, Carlson's Boo... Sep 24, 2014

WOMEN AT OXFORD | Rhodes, Trinity, St Benet's Sep 18, 2017

OXFORD MUSIC: Schola Cantorum in NYC at Trinity Ch... Sep 16, 2014

OXFORD IN FICTION: Top Six Fictional Colleges (Upd... Jul 2, 2016

TRINITY | Alumni Weekend Sep 17, 2017, 2 comments

OXFORD IN WW2 | Felicity Tholstrup Oct 6, 2017

HERALDRY: The College of Arms and Windsor Herald Aug 15, 2015

OXFORD OPEN DAY | Selling the Colleges, 2017 Oct 9, 2017

OXFORD | Russian Heritage Sep 24, 2017

OXFORD | Russian Heritage

Dr Nina Kruglikova at
Weston Library, Oxford.

What would the main themes be of a Russian Heritage tour of Oxford? 

I asked Nina Kruglikova, a fellow Trinity College, Oxford alum whom I met on a tour led by Felicity Tholstrup of WW2 Oxford earlier this month on the Oxford Weekend. 

Here are some topics for a Russian Heritage tour, which Nina has conducted in the past.

17th Century – Visit to Oxford from Peter the Great. Tsar Peter I ("the Great"), founder of St Petersburg, was born in 1672 and became emperor at ten years of age. He ruled for 43 years. 

He visited Oxford, incognito, staying at the Golden Cross and visiting the Chapel at Trinity College. Even though he was in disguise, he cut such a figure that he attracted attention.

19th Century – Visit from Alexander I. Emperor Alexander (1777-1825) went to Radcliffe Camera to celebrate the victory over Napoleon in 1814. He stayed in the Queen's Room in Merton (where the wife of Charles I lived during the period before Cromwell prevailed over the monarchy). He gave a big vase from Suberia and also a double-headed eagle in a stained-glass window, the arms of the Tsar. One legend is that Alexander caused damage during his visit and the vase and window were repayment.

Peter I ("The Great")

20th Century (A) – Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov. Yusupov (1887-1967), who as a youth went under the title Count Sumarokov-Elston (Князь Фе́ликс Фе́ликсович Юсу́пов, Граф Сумаро́ков-Эльстон) was for three years, 1909-12, at University College, Oxford. He had lavish parties at Univ. For example, he brought in a famed Russian ballet dancer named Pavlova (a cake is named after her). His best friend from St. Petersburg, Oswald Raynor, was at Oriel.

At the end of his student years at Oxford he was reported to have visited Royal Albert Hall for a full-dress event and to have impressed many onlookers as the best-dressed person in the Hall. Five years later he went to the United States and was depicted in a thinly fictionalized film as having raped his wife. He sued the film company and won.

He is credited along with the Tsar's cousin Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich with killing Father Grigori Yefimovich (Gregory) 1869-1916, the "mad Monk" friend of the family of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra. Rasputin died at Yusupov's home; he did not eat the cyanide-laced cookies so he was shot in the head.

Nicolas II – Nice man,
bad tsar.

Yusupov and his wife Irina migrated to England after the assassination of Tsar Nicholas with his wife and five children in 1918. 

There were two revolutions in 1917. The first was by the democratic Duma ruling committee, in February. The Duma forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate, ending three centuries of Romanov rule. 

It would be another half a year before the Bolshevik (October) Revolution.  government was formed, after the Socialist revolution in late autumn 1917.

Yusupov and his wife bought a house at 4 Marston Street, Oxford that is now called St Nicholas House. They were interviewed about his 1953 book, Lost Splendor. Prince Yusupov died at St Pancras Hospital in 1963 and is buried at Headington Cemetery outside of Oxford. 

The influence and origins of Rasputin continue to be a mystery, so that when Yusupov died there was interest in his personal papers; however, he apparently burned them.

20th Century (B) – Charles Sydney Gibbes. Son of John Gibbs (sic – he added the "e" later in life), he did the Moral Sciences Tripos at St John's College, Cambridge. He became the tutor to the children of Tsar Nicholas II. He was deeply distressed a perceived betrayal of the Tsar by his British relatives, but the Great War was going so badly that all of the countries were fearful of revolution. One view is that George V's wife Mary was hostile to the Tsar's family because they lorded over her at Osborne on the Isle of Wight when Victoria was still alive. After Nicholas II and his family were assassinated, Gibbes first became a monk and then became an Orthodox priest in Oxford, taking the name Nicholas out of respect for the Tsar and his family.

20th Century (C) – Leonid Pasternak. The father of Boris Pasternak, Leonid lived in Park Town, Oxford. He was an artist and his house is now a museum, full of his paintings.

21st Century – St Nicholas Church. The church that Nina and other Russian Orthodox faithful attend is at the previously mentioned #4 Marston Road (St Nicholas House), near the intersection with Ferry Road. It used to be the Anglican church of St Nicholas. They have Sunday services from 10:30 until 1:30 pm or later.

UNIV CHALLENGE | Trinity Oxford Wins in 1st Round

Jeremy Paxman, Host of University
Challenge

In the 2017-18 University Challenge, on Monday, September 3, Trinity College, Oxford defeated University College, London (UCL), which has 11,000 in staff serving 35,000 students, by 20 points in the first round of University Challenge.

The full YouTube show is here.

The Trinity team of four included one woman, Nicole Rosenfeld, a rarity in University Challenge. The team was led by James Gunn. Trinity alumnus Ian Senior adds:

He was as quick as Eric Monkman in the previous series but without Monkman’s gargoyle-like expressions of tortured brilliance. Monkman has already secured for himself a BBC radio show, so a bright future may await James Gunn if his team can keep it up.

The 2016-17 Challenge. In the final of the 2016-2017 University Challenge, Trinity College Cambridge defeated Somerville College, Oxford, correctly answering questions on topics from Jane Austen to tea production in countries of the Middle East and central Asia.

Trinity Cambridge Captain Ralph Morley, a Classicist, led his teammates Matthew Ridley (Economics), Filip Drnovsek Zorko (Natural Sciences) and Richard Freeland (Maths).

The win marks the third time Cambridge has won since the BBC series was revived in 1995 and is the third win for Trinity in the 43-year history of the series. A Cambridge team last claimed the title in 2010 when Emmanuel beat St John’s College, Oxford.

Nearly 130 teams entered the series - which is made by ITV Studios - with Jeremy Paxman (St Catharine's 1969) asking 3,039 questions prior to the final. 

University Rankings. In University rankings in September 2017, Oxford prevailed, ranking for the second year in a row as the best university in the world by Times Higher Education. The long-time competitor, "Fenland Polytechnic" (says Ian Senior), came second. Unlike the annual Boat Race, Oxford and Cambridge are not the only two universities considered for the final selection by the Times in their ranking.

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.