R.I.P.: Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Poet

Sir Geoffrey Hill, uncredited photo in
Oxonian Review.

Oxonian Sir Geoffrey Hill, from Keble College, has often been praised as Britain’s finest living poet, even as the finest contemporary poetry in English.

He lived out his final years in Cambridge, where he taught in the 1980s. He also taught for many years at Boston University. He died on June 30 at 84.

In 2010 Hill was elected to Oxford's Professorship of Poetry for five years, leaving far behind the nine other candidates. The election was announced on Hill's 78th birthday, and he also received the degree of Honorary D Litt at Encaenia the following week. The Warden of Keble was his official "representative" in the election. Previous holders of the post have included John Keble and Matthew Arnold and more recently Hill's longtime colleague at Boston University, Christopher Ricks.

His complex poetry is noted for its passionate moral tone. It is chock-full of dark and learned references to violence and religion in English history, while celebrating the landscape of Worcestershire, where he was born to working-class family.

His death was announced by his wife Alice on Twitter and by Emmanuel College, Cambridge on its website.

Comment

The version of his obituary in the New York Times that I read refers to his Oxford college as "Kemble", which is a town in Gloucestershire. The Times meant Keble College. John Keble was from Gloucestershire and was an Anglican churchman, involved in the Oxford Movement along with John Henry Newman, who became a Roman Catholic. Coincidentally a Fr. John Kemble, Roman Catholic priest from Herefordshire, was martyred and sainted after the alleged "Popish Plot" of 1678 to assassinate Charles II. This John Kemble is apparently not connected with either Keble College or Geoffrey Hill.

BRITAIN | July 1–Hong Kong Handover

Chris Patten, the Last Governor of Hong Kong

This day in 1997, Hong Kong reverted back to Chinese rule. The man who presided over the lowering of the Union Jack was the outgoing Governor, Chris Patten, now Lord Patten of Barnes and Chancellor of Oxford University. 

The tearful ceremony was attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Other than a few thousand protesting Hong Kong residents, the folding of the flag was peaceful.

The original unfurling of the British flag was not peaceful. In 1839, Britain invaded China and occupied Hong Kong, then a sparsely inhabited island off the coast of southeast China. Two years later, China ceded the island to the British in the Convention of Chuenpi. The year after that, the Treaty of Nanking ended the First Opium War.

In 1898, Britain was granted an additional 99 years of rule over Hong Kong under the Second Convention of Peking. In 1984, after long negotiations, the British and the Chinese signed a formal agreement approving the 1997 turnover of the island in exchange for a Chinese pledge to preserve Hong Kong’s capitalist system.

Hong Kong's new administrator, Tung Chee Hwa, announced a policy of “one country, two systems,” preserving Hong Kong’s role as a capitalist center in Asia.

Comment

At least one person (i.e., me) has compared Hong Kong's presence as a trading post outside of China to a possible future for Britain after Brexit leaves the country with a leadership black hole.

BLOG VIEWS | 130K–Most-read posts

This blog just passed 130,000 page views. Total views for all my blogs–1.2 million.

The blog includes 200 posts since inception, an average of 650 views per post.

Thank you for reading.

Here are the most-read posts during the past few weeks:

WW2: Why Wasn't Oxford Bombed? (June 22, 2016–16,0... Jun 8, 2013, 2 comments

POPULISM | Swinging Back in USA and Britain Jun 29, 2016

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

OXFORD IN AMERICA 3: Making Independence Inevitabl... Sep 20, 2012

HERALDRY: Douglas, Moray, de Vere (Updated June 1,... Nov 23, 2014, 2 comments

HERALDRY: "What's Your Blazon?" in "Oxford Today" ... Oct 15, 2015

COLLEGE ARMS: Oxford Shop (Updated May 21, 2016) May 13, 2016

OXFORD: Gargoyles and Grotesques May 30, 2014

BOAT RACE: The First Race and History of the Boats... Oct 28, 2014

RHODES: Oxford Monument-Trashing (Comment) (Update... Dec 25, 2015

POPULISM: Swinging Back in USA and Britain (PS Nov. 30, 2016)

Merton's John Jewkes

The New York Times today has a news analysis by Eduardo Porter that speculates whether the populist trends in America and Britain spell the end of the Capitalist anti-regulatory era that had its heyday when President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and the government bureaucracy.

If so, the two countries are both going home with the country that brung them. Origins of the intellectual ferment that led to the libertarian triumphs in the 1980s can be found both at the University of Chicago and at Oxford.

Martin Feldstein, for example, came to Nuffield College, Oxford with the idea of bringing back the National Health Service formula to the United States and instead was reoriented to a Laissez-Faire outlook by the libertarians at Oxford like Merton's Prof. John Jewkes, author of The Sources of Invention.

Similarly, Oxford's current Chancellor, born Christopher Francis (Chris) Patten, now Lord Patten of Barnes, when a new graduate of Oxford, went to New York to study at the feet of progressive Republican John Lindsay. Instead was shocked by the depth of resentment against Washington that he found in his touring of the south. Similarly, in New York City he found the same feelings stirred up by Bill Buckley in the primary campaign for mayor against Lindsay–Buckley sensed deep hostility to Big Government by discontented workers, notably Irish Americans. When he went back to London, Patten used his experience to help design the campaign strategy for the Conservative Party that swept Thatcher to victory.

The reforms introduced by Reagan and Thatcher were embraced by their more liberal successors, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

Postscript, Nov. 30, 2016

In the United States, Donald Trump's transition seems to be pointing toward more privatization and deregulation – in education, health care, and the environment. The populism of the right has won out over the populism of the left. Bernie Sanders intended to keep up the pressure on President Hillary Clinton. It's now clear now how that is going to work.

The Trump Transition reminds me of the late 1960s, when the Nader Raiders and the incoming Nixon administration were in wide agreement over the failures of the regulatory agencies like the FTC and ICC. But the Nader conclusion was to reform the regulation and make it work better. The Nixon deregulatory hawks favored terminating the agencies or the offending regulations–but it was under Nixon that the EPA was started, headed by Bill Ruckelshaus. The Trump appointees seem to be bent on the same deregulatory goals as Nixon, including reducing the powers and commitments of the EPA.

R.I.P.: Jan. 25–Paul Nevill, O.S.B. (Updated June 22, 2016)

Dom Paul Nevill, OSB. Portrait by
James Gunn, R.A.

This day in 1954 died Dom Valentine Paul Nevill, Headmaster of Ampleforth College in Yorkshire for 30 years. 

He was and is widely viewed as one of Britain's great 20th-century headmasters.

I was at that time a student at Ampleforth and the news was reported to us as if a giant revered ancient oak had fallen. 

Nevill went up to St. Benet's Hall, Oxford as Brother Paul in 1902 and graduated with a B.A. in History. He was a parish priest in the Village of Ampleforth for a decade, 1914-24. From then until his death he was in a leadership position at the school.

My brother Randal Marlin was at Ampleforth a year longer than me, and was older and remembers more. He says:

I remember Father Paul very well. I was studying science and he had a special class for science students in which he taught them history. 

He and my Housemaster (St Thomas’s), Father Denis, were very close. Father Paul was very keen on the political reformer William Cobbett and his book Rural Rides. He saw that America was the new power and he wanted to make sure I, as an American, knew the kinds of issues that were ingrained in the British psyche. He explained the Monroe doctrine, without imposing on us any judgement about the absurdity of it. 

Through his historical expositions I got the idea that he favoured beer over tea and coffee. He believed in big plans. Cobbett apparently championed America because there were "no Wilberforces" there. 

Father Paul could be quite terrifying. I remember that one of the Irish boys had played the prank of turning on all the water taps just before our bus left, causing flooding. Father Paul got to the bus before it left and found out who the culprit was and gave him a thorough dressing down. I could be wrong, but I think the idea was that the bus would be going nowhere until the perpetrator 'fessed up.

Father Paul must have been a good teacher for me to remember as much as I do.
It is said that at a Headmasters’ conference he was the last speaker. Others had been saying in so many ways that at their school they prepared boys for life, for good citizenry, etc. The legend is that Father Paul said: "At Ampleforth, on the contrary, our mission is to prepare boys for death, to live a good Christian life in preparation for the final day of judgement."

I should note that not all Ampleforth alumni view Dom Paul Nevill as the very model of a modern headmaster. Someone has written to me to argue that his views were  "reactionary". Certainly they were, by today's standards, and even by the standards of post-WW2 Britain. But he was a good exemplar of the kind of person who gave spine to the British Empire in its heyday.

OXFORD BEER: Brewer Walton of Shotover Hill

Brewer Walton
Keeps the malt on.
His Trinity brand
Is ever so grand.
(Clerihew by JT Marlin.)

I have previously recorded a visit in New York City from Paul Walton, a branding expert who contacted me after reading my article on the coats of arms of the Oxford Colleges in the Michaelmas issue of Oxford Today.

Arms as Brands

We both see coats of arms as one of the earliest forms of branding.

It was important in battle to know who was trying to kill you, and who you were supposed to kill. Imagine a sports field where everyone wore the same color shirt...

(Hey, wait, Yoko Ono already Imagined this; her message was that chess matches would be very peaceful if all the chess pieces had the same color and the chess board squares were undifferentiated. No thrill of battle, but the compensating joy of peace.)

Brewer Walton

Earlier this month I was in Oxford and visited with Paul at the Coffee House at the Broad Street end of the Turl (its formal name is the Turl Street Kitchen).

We talked inter alia about his craft-beer enterprise, Shotover Brewery. He says the Trinity brand of his beer (one of the Brewery's four brands) is doing well and he thinks its success reflects both its good name and good taste:

• Trinity is certainly a good name – why else would the Great Gatsby have chosen it as the name of the college at Oxford that he claimed to have attended, when he had the pick of the litter?
• On the taste front, the brewery recently won an award as the best beer in Oxfordshire. 

Shotover?

Shotover Brewery gets its name from Shotover Hill, which is located in Headington (leave Oxford by  Magdalen Bridge and take the Old Road) on the other side of the Ring Road.

But how did Shotover Hill get its name? A couple of sources say that Oliver Cromwell shot his musket over Shotover Hill when he was engaged in the Siege of Oxford. If you remember, Cromwell and his New Model Army eventually overwhelmed Charles I and a few years later beheaded the hapless king, the only sitting English king ever executed (after Charles, the "divine right of kings" dogma was peddled less aggressively).

But Paul says that Shotover Hill is a lot older than Cromwell's musket:

It was an arrow that shot over the hill. Shotover was an ancient royal hunting forest. Another good contender for the origin is from the French Chateau Vert.

Just to confuse us all further, I consulted Widow Wikipedia, Grandma Google's sister, and she agrees with Brewer Walton that Shotover is older than Cromwell–so old that in her opinion the "Shotover" is derived from the Old English scoet ofer, meaning "steep slope".

Take your pick.

COLLEGE ARMS: Oxford Shop (Updated Sept. 24, 2016)

These framed Oxford college shields include Merton's new one. The Merton and Green
Templeton enamels look metallic golden, which is good... but they differ from the yellow
enamels in the All Souls, St Antony's, SEH, Trinity, Wolfson and other shields, which is bad.

Following up on my article on the Oxford Colleges' coats of arms in the Michaelmas 2015 issue of Oxford Today and and a brief previous note on the Oxford University Shop, last week I paid another visit to the Oxford Shop at 106 High Street.

This time I had a kind introduction by Christine Fairchild and Chris Evans of Oxford Limited, which is charged with licensing the trademarked Oxford logo. This official logo used to be only the new belted shield as in the middle of the photo above. Now Oxford Limited has also licensed an older shield.

As the Walt Disney Company has found in earning its $52 billion/year revenue, mostly from its world-wide licensing programs, the job of a licensing agent goes beyond writing contracts with wannabe licensees. They must:

• ferret out knock-off producers who copy the licensed product without permission or fee, and  
• ensure that wherever the licensed product is on sale it is a quality item produced sustainably in socially accountable workplaces.

The Oxford college coats of arms, which is my focus, are in an interesting situation. The Oxford Shop sells college-branded products but it does not license them, nor do the colleges themselves. The arms of each college are the responsibility of the college's governing board. The colleges' boat race identifiers–the blades, Boat Club blazers, ties–present an even more interesting situation, since they predate many of the colleges, and in the case of St Catz the Boat Club provided the name of the college instead of the other way round.

Unlike Oxford University itself, none of the colleges—according to several knowledgable people to whom I have posed the question—has trademarked its arms. This surprised me, especially in the case of the business college Green Templeton!

In the Oxford Shop Tracey gave me a thorough tour of Oxford University's college arms offerings, and I was given special permission based on my introduction to photograph various items featuring the college coats of arms for the purpose of illustrating my analysis of the arms. (More to come.)

Other Posts on the Arms of Oxford Colleges and PPHs: Original Article in Oxford Today . Heraldry as Branding . Heraldry as Fun .  Coat of Arms vs. Crest . Sinister Questions . Visit to the College of Arms . Windsor Herald Talks to New Yorkers . Shaming of Harvard Law Shield :: Rapid Expansion of Oxford's Colleges and Halls . Oxford Stars . HERALDRY SUPERLINK . Harris Manchester College . Linacre College . St Catherine's . St Cross College . St Edmund Hall . Trinity College :: Regent's Park College . St Benet's Hall

Other Related Posts: Douglas Arms in France