OXFORD THREE CAPITALS ZOOM | Dr. Mark Carney, Thursday, December 10

Governor Mark Carney

November 30, 2020—The Three Capitals Zoom was started earlier this year by the Oxford Society branches in Ottawa, Mexico City and Washington, D.C.

The next speaker will be up Thursday,  December 10, from 10 am to noon.

Dr. Mark Carney (St Peter’s and Nuffield, Oxford) is a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. He is also a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.  

Most recently, the Secretary General of the United Nations named him the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, an honorific position.  

He will speak to Oxonians on a topic of high importance: "The UN private finance agenda: How to ensure every financial system takes climate change into account”.

To register, use this link: https://to.oxonian.ca/carney.

Other Oxford news: New Master of Univ, Baroness Amos .

 

 

GILLING CASTLE | Where I learned to love coats of arms

Gilling Castle, Great Hall. Photo by Damian
Bramley, Courtesy Ampleforth College.

November 28, 2020.  The Great Hall at Gilling Castle was reconfigured for primary school pupils with specially sized furniture created by Robert Thompson, the "Mouseman" of Kilburn, Yorkshire.

Thompson was so called because all of his furniture at Ampleforth College since the time of the great Headmaster Paul Nevill has the distinctive carved mouse hiding somewhere on it.

When I ate my three meals a day in this dining room it was initially at the table at lower right, then the table at the rear, in the paneled alcove. The teacher at that time was at the head of the table.. I remember being immediately to the left of the teacher in both cases.

The coat of arms over the fireplace is that of the Fairfax family, cousins of the General Fairfax who tracked down Charles I in Oxford and turned him over to Cromwell's government for a trial. King Charles went to his death claiming the divine right to rule without Parliament. Subsequent monarchs have been less less vocal about their beliefs in their divine right to rule independently of Parliament.

On the other hand, the British people did not care for the idea of Oliver Cromwell's children replacing the royal princes. The Restoration under Charles II was welcomed.

More about all of this is on pp. 11-12 of Oxford College Arms.

OXFORD TRIALS | Regimen Has Average 70% Efficacy (Updated)

Race for the COVID-19 Vaccine.

November 23, 2020 (Updated Nov. 25)—The University of Oxford, in collaboration with AstraZeneca plc, today announced interim trial data from its Phase III trials.

The first report was that the average efficacy of the vaccine is 70 percent. The major advantage of the vaccine is that it can be much more cheaply produced than the other two vaccines in play from Pfizer and Moderna.

(Update: However, a New York Times raises questions about controls over the trials, in a setback for proponents of the vaccine.)

The AstraZeneca "candidate" vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019) was shown to be effective at preventing COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) and offers a high level of protection. 

Phase 3 interim analysis including 131 Covid-19 cases indicates that the vaccine is 70 percent effective when combining data from two dosing regimens—90 percent in one and 62 percent in the other. The higher-efficacy regimen used a halved first dose and standard second dose. (Questions have been raised about the halved first dose, which appears to have been an unplanned underdose administered only to a group of subjects 55 and younger.)

Early indications are that the vaccine could reduce virus transmission, from an observed reduction in asymptomatic infections. There were no hospitalized or severe cases in anyone who received the vaccine. The vaccine was tested on a large safety database from over 24,000 volunteers from clinical trials in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, with follow up since April.

Crucially for the candidate vaccine, it can be easily administered in existing healthcare systems, stored at ‘fridge temperature’ (2-8 °C) and distributed using existing logistics. Also, large-scale manufacturing is ongoing in more than ten countries to support equitable global access.

For more information, go to the full announcement or the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine web hub or the COVID-19 trial website. (And the New York Times story previously  cited.)

PHILIP PULLMAN | His Dark Materials Interview

Philip Pullman

November 21, 2020—I became interested in the work of Philip Pullman through writing my book, Oxford College Arms, which is now going into its 5th edition. 

I thought it might be a nice idea to add (fictional) coats of arms of fictional Oxford colleges to the mix of arms covered in the book. I assembled a list of fictional colleges and their related real colleges.

Philip Pullman's colleges in His Dark Materials trilogy are prominent on the list. The New Yorker interview with him increased my interest in preparing coats of arms for his colleges. I spoke with two people who work for his publisher. They said it might be of interest to the author and publisher. I would like to pursue this. 

OXFORD COLLEGE ARMS | New Cover

 

November 18, 2020—This is the new cover for Oxford College Arms. It is uploaded today and will appear on copies soon, as current inventory is depleted.

Thank you for ordering copies for your friends— https://amzn.to/2UCVpq6!

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE | New Master, Baroness Amos

Photo: SOAS

Baroness Valerie Amos

Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos of Brondesbury, CH, PC in September 2020 became the new Master of Univ, the first-ever head of an Oxford college. Born 13 March 1954, she has been a British Labour Party politician and diplomat. In 2015, Amos was appointed the ninth Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, becoming the first Black woman to lead a university school in the UK. She served as the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator in 2010-2015. Before her appointment to the UN, she was British High Commissioner to Australia. She was created a life peer in 1997, serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council in 2003-2007. When Amos was appointed Secretary of State for International Development on 12 May 2003, following the resignation of Clare Short, she became the first Black woman to serve as a Cabinet minister. She left the Cabinet when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. She was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2001-2003 and Chief Executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission in 1989-1994.

An alum of Univ, Sean Denniston of the Washington, D.C. branch of the Oxford University Society, tells me that the latest exciting development at the college is the expansion of its North Oxford space.  The previous Master of Univ, Sir Ivor Crewe, says this is the largest expansion of the college since the 17th century. It is being built with attention to sustainability, biodiversity, and relationship to the local community in North Oxford.

CORONATION | Elizabeth I, November 17, 1558

Elizabeth I (regnat 1558-1603)

 November 17, 2020—This day in 1558, 25-year-old Queen Elizabeth I,  the Virgin Queen, ascended to the English throne after the death of her half-sister, Mary I (Mary Tudor or "Bloody" Mary although she wasn't as bloody as her father Henry VIII). 

Elizabeth 2 was a year older than Elizabeth I when she became Queen in 1952. (I was in England then and vividly remember watching the coronation on a tiny television.) Elizabeth II has stayed in the throne for 68 years, the only British monarch to have lived this long and to have held the crown for this long.

The Crown went to Elizabeth I at a time when England was debt-ridden because of Henry VIII’s spending, despite his having seized and sold so many monastic lands. 

The country was deeply divided because of Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and then Mary I's attempt to restore Catholicism. A new problem was emerging with a dissenters disagreeing with the doctrines and example of both the Catholic Church and the Church of England. It would be 62 years from Elizabeth I’s ascension to the throne, and in the reign of James I of England (also titled James VI of Scotland), that the Pilgrims gave up on both England and Holland and set off to create the Plymouth colony in the New World. (Spoiler: The new regime in Massachusetts got to look a lot like the theocracy they left behind.)

Elizabeth I coat of arms

She inspired her subjects with walking tours and encouraged portraits of herself in gorgeous regal attire and flattering songs about her. She started England's empire by chartering companies like the East India Company to colonize areas around the world.  She was the first monarch to allow theaters to operate legally, opening up careers for dramatic writers of whom we are most grateful for William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. 

Compared with James I and the ill-fated Charles I, who provoked Parliament with the doctrine of the Monarch’s Divine Right to Rule (until dissenters in Parliament raised an army, chased Charles down in Oxford University, and made clear how much they disagreed with this idea...), Elizabeth I was wise and tolerant. She was the head of the Church of England, but she gave Catholics freedom to worship. She was not a war hawk, but when she learned that Spain had sent an Armada of warships to England, she rode out to rally the troops and England prevailed.