Late night library

Last night, thanks to Anna covering children and my new policy of drink less, doctorate more which I'll be adopting till the damn thing is finished (hopefully December. They'll be a party), I spent an evening in the Library. I haven't spent an evening in a library for a long time. I used to. I remember very fondly coming out of the Bodleian at closing time at 10pm and into the pub. I should stress that outside of Finals panic, I had rarely got the Bod before lunch on said days.

Anyway, I certainly haven't spent any time in the Maughan library (that's KCL's) late at night. Here my reflections:

1. Late night usage is very different from the day. When I visited during the day in the spring, there were sections where I was alone once the motion sensitive lights went off). It was bustling in the evening. And everyone was a bit louder. Disappointingly, this didn't seem to be because they had been drinking.
2. KCL has a very curious cataloguing system. While I have a some sympathy for idiosyncratic approaches to taxonomy (see long and short posts), even I struggle to see why the Late Roman should be split from the Byzantines, but combined with modern Italy. I faced a wall that held biographies of Constantine and Cavour, but not Cantacuzenus. 
3. Despite the fact that everything has changed at university because they all have to pay and they can get all the articles online, undergraduates are still prone to a good old fashioned essay crisis. In the four hours that I was there, two of them sat next to me attempting to write an essay. They didn’t get very far and seemed to be settled in for the long haul. They were quite annoying and seemed to working on sociology (they obviously hadn't figured the cataloguing system out either), but I mellowed towards them through the evening.
4. As a result, I felt exceptionally smug. I also remembered how much better I work in the library compared to being at home, and how much more I enjoy working in them, even at night.
5. That's even true given the now common disregard for basic library etiquette. While I was there, one of my undergraduates got through two cans of Red Bull. Given I was there from 6:30 and 10:15ish, God knows how he was going to get through the small hours. More important, who thinks it's acceptable to drink sticky drinks in a room full of someone else's books?
6. I am very glad I didn't go to London. Regardless of the quality of the library environment, it's always a long way home. For all of my time at college, it was never more than ten minutes walk.
7. That said, cycling home through the centre of London late in the evening is simply amazing. I haven't done that for ages either, but spinning through the centre when the streets have started to clear, but everything remains lit up is magical. Not even a slightly malfunctioning gear changing mechanism can spoil it
8. My bike needs a service and possibly a new gear box.

It was great, and I got loads done. Unlike the undergraduates next to me.

Historia Lausiaca

Sometimes, it's hard to beat the early church. I've just found the following throwaway line in a description of Palladius' writings on Holy orders (R.T. Meyer, 'Holy Orders in the Eastern Church in the Early fifth century', SP 16 (1985), 46):

'A certain lector was falsely accused of fornication by a pregnant woman, who claimed he was the father. All too hastily the lector was deposed by his bishop. The lector then said: "Well, since I have fallen, give her to me in marriage, for I am no longer a cleric and she is no longer a virgin" (HL 70.2)

The account then goes on to show how the guilty woman was in pain and then confessed whence the pain miraculously stopped. And this proves the power of prayer. But I'd rather have clergy like the above without the ending.

Live from the BL

At last, the BL has finally stopped charging for internet access and allows me to access it for free. I'm sure the Bodleian had this some time ago, though I'm not sure it's wireless.

It will allow me to work here and access work email etc. as well as stop me bothering people for the rugby or cricket scores while pretending to work on doctoral matters. I'm not sure it's an unmixed blessing though, it does mean there are even more distractions than there used to be, this blog among them.

UPDATE: It does appear however that the BL haven't been spending enough time at doing at their actual job. Both my orders were wrong today and having re-ordered them, they failed to arrive before the arbitrary cut off for delivry of half an hour before actual closure. I was (am) not happy.

Hurrah for Alan Bennett

I hear on Today that Alan Bennett's papers are being lodged in Oxford with the Bodleian, rather than shipped off to the States for a shedload of cash.

I'm with this lot who thinks this happens too much. I'm pretty relaxed from a cultural perspective. There is broad cultural continuity between us and the US, and any country with the Elgin Marbles cannot complain too much about these things - a narrow definition of national elements serves no-one well. However, the acquisition of most major archives by US institutions undermines the reputation and support for serious research in the UK, and that can only be a bad thing for our universities.

Hurrah for Alan.

The problem of presentation

When I was at Ofcom, I remember telling one of the junior members of our team (who is paranoid about identity thievery, so I won't mention his name), that his work was fine, but ugly, so could he change it so that it was easier to read. He was appalled - as if such a trivial matter could be so important.

I was reminded of this over the weekend, when I went to a workshop on prosopography (if you need to look it up, here). It was an excellent day, with some really good thoughts for me to take away, but I was struck by the variability of the presentations. Everyone in the room was clever, everyone was probably pretty eloquent (given most had written long, well-structured PhDs), yet most presentations were either mediocre, or good extemporisations. In fact, most of the best academic presentations (be they lectures or papers) have been of this type. The best was by a chap called Richard Price, who opening his talk with, 'I reread my paper on the train this morning and decided it was too boring to read out' and then proceeded to give an accurate and witty account of the Council of Chalcedon without notes - glorious.

But this was a workshop to compare methods and such extemporisations don't work quite so well. What does work well are slides. And almost everyone used them, mostly badly. There was one exception, Stephen Baxter gave well run though and clear summary of the work he'd been doing on Anglo - Saxons. I looked him up: he used to be a management consultant.

I do slides a lot; I was rubbish at them to begin with - it's a different skill to essays and papers, but it's not that hard: they need to be short, clear and allow you to talk to them, not read them out. I doubt historians are taught how to do this (I wasn't), but - on the evidence of this - God they need to be. A shame too, because it made it harder to understand what were fascinating issues and less appreciative of what was excellent work.

Putting my money where my mouth is

Like most people of my age, I suspect I am entering a phase of life where a number of institutions in my past begin to try to extract maximum amounts of money from me.

Last night, college rang and I caved in. Actually, it was the third time they had rung and I could no longer claim that I was busy as I had done the last time. But it had given me time to think; and I had decided to give them some money.

In essence, my logic went like this:

• I believe in elite universities. It is paramount that we have academic centres of excellence. This is hardly controversial - ask and Frenchman or American
• I think Oxford should be one of them. Actually, I think this is really important. Oxford has a certain charm and refusal to take it all too seriously which I welcome. It's a useful corrective t0 the tedious seriousness which characterises working life
• I believe, again quite strongly, that private funding should be a part of the solution. Now isn't the time to detail my thoughts on university policy (there are many)
• I approve of philanthropy. I give.
• I owe a great deal to Oxford, both for the obvious career benefits it gave me, but also the enjoyment and the friends I made

So, actually the resistance to handing over cash is irrational. The only rational objections remaining were either financial (which doesn't stack up. I have the money - it comes out of my tithe) and the feeling there are more deserving causes. Clearly this last is powerful, starving children in Africa &c. &c. But I think we have to move past that, otherwise nothing would be donated to anything other than development charities. They are both important.

As a final aside, in the cold light of day, I feel slightly cowardly in that I did specify that it should be spent on student support. This is obviously an accounting fiction and Christ Church will just rebalance the books accordingly, but it made me feel better. If I had really had the courage of my convictions, I would have given it to them to spend at their discretion. Maybe next time.

In praise of Henry Chadwick

When I was young, and politically ambitious, I was very excited by the fabled "double" achieved by William Hague at Oxford, who as successively president of the Conservative Association and the Oxford Union. It hadn't been done since when I went up and wasn't done again until a friend of mine completed it in 2003. However, as it didn't really turn out well for Hague, and - let's be honest - it's not that interesting, it occurred to me there were more impressive and greater double achievements. As I get older, I find myself instead excited by those individuals who display polymathic abilities: Jonathan Sumption, who combines a highly successful practice as a QC with an academic career that is equally stellar.

However, when I read last week that Henry Chadwick had died, an older feeling of veneration for a single - career double kicked in. Chadwick is rare in having held the Regius professorship in Divinity at Oxford then Cambridge, as well as head of house at both Oxford (Christ Church) and Cambridge (Peterhouse); in effect, a double double in his chosen career. It was once said, that 'The Anglican church may not have a Pope, but it does have Henry Chadwick."

He was an astonishing scholar as well. I won't dwell here on his publications and contribution to patristics and late antiquity. By the time I got to Oxford he was in his late 70s, though still publishing and giving the occasional seminar, which were still enormously fascinating. However, I want to record here my personal thanks for one of his shorter and less weighty tomes. Having avoided the early church throughout my undergraduate history career, I read his Pelican history of the early church in 2001. Written in 1967, it is fresh, illuminating and remains brilliant. And it changed my academic life, beginning the process that brought me historically earlier into late antiquity and the early councils. Everyone should read it - it's also short.

His death has been noted by those in his field, just as he was garlanded with honours in his life; the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote his Guardian obituary, from which the quotation above comes, but he passes largely unknown to the great mass of the population. A great shame; for we shall not see his like again.