Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Was Henry VIII a “family man” so to speak? The notion seems vaguely ridiculous; by 1547, the philandering English monarch had laid claim to six wives, two of which he had executed, including the infamously-beheaded Anne Boleyn.
By Kenneth R. Johnston
What do Edward Snowden and Samuel Taylor Coleridge have in common? Both were upset by government snooping into private communications on the pretext of national security. Snowden exposed the US National Security Agency’s vast programs of electronic surveillance to the Guardian and the Washington Post, Coleridge belittled the spy system of William Pitt the Younger in his autobiography, Biographia Literaria (1817).
By Trevor Herbert
The story of military music in the long nineteenth century is absent from conventional music histories even though it had a vast influence on most aspects of musical life. Bands of music originated in the British military in the eighteenth century among the aristocratic officer class as a form of entertainment and as a means of enhancing the cultural status of that profession, and they retained this function throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.
When talking about spy fiction, people sometimes confuse verisimilitude and reality. Spy novelists who use the words “friends” and “cousins” to describe our American collaborators are engaging in verbal verisimilitude. When John Le Carré tells us in his latest novel A Delicate Truth that the business of secret intelligence is now being privatized, he’s conveying an important reality.
By Robert Colls
Sorry to bother you with serious thoughts on your birthday George, but you’ve become quite a famous chap down here. To your certain horror you’ve even become slightly fashionable and it’s only a matter of time before some lithe young man calling himself ‘Orwell’ comes sashaying down the catwalk in bags and cords, thin tash and Tin Tin hair.
By Philip Carter
It’s 1 July 1977: the Jacksons are Number 1 in the UK charts; a pint of beer costs 40 pence, milk per pint is 11p; Elvis has just given what will be his final concert; Virginia Wade becomes the last British player to win the women’s singles tennis championship at Wimbledon. – See more at: https://blog.oup.com/?p=45004&preview=true#sthash.r1cxNYqs.dpuf
By Ian Miller
Between 1909 and 1914, imprisoned militant suffragettes undertook hunger strikes across Britain and Ireland. Public distaste for the practice of forcible feeding ultimately led to the passing of the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, or ‘the Cat and Mouse Act’ as it was more commonly known. The 25th of April 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of this Act, passed so that prison medical officers could discharge hunger-striking suffragettes from prisons if they fell ill from hunger.
By Seth Stein LeJacq
These days we generally agree that the big medical problems should be left to the professionals. We don’t see ourselves as the appropriate people and our homes as the appropriate places to deal with major injuries, severe illnesses, chronic conditions, and many other significant medical events. This wasn’t the case in seventeenth-century Britain, where domestic healing was the norm and the home was the central place where healing occurred. People prepared to deal with the very worst illnesses and injuries at home.
By David Roberts
Praised in their day as a complete manual of education, and despised by Samuel Johnson for teaching `the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master’, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters reflect the political craft of a leading statesman and the urbane wit of a man who associated with Pope, Addison, and Swift.
Despite its controversial history, the Book of Common Prayer is an influential religious text and one of the most compelling works of English literature. How has this document retained its relevancy even after numerous revisions? What can it teach us about British history and the English language? We spoke with Brian Cummings, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Book of Common Prayer, about the importance of this text.
By Rebecca Conway
Next week sees the culmination of the 2013 search for Miss England. Aspiring beauty queens from across the nation will compete for the title and the chance to contend for the Miss World crown in front of a global audience of one billion television viewers.
By Elizabeth Crawford
“She paid ‘the price of freedom’. Glad to pay it – glad though it brought her to death (..) the first woman martyr who has gone to death for this cause.” In the context of the women’s suffrage campaign who do you think was the subject of this eulogy? Was it Emily Wilding Davison, the centenary of whose death is being honoured this June?
Sunday 2 June marks the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in London. It also therefore follows that it is the anniversary of the works which were first performed at the coronation, including William Walton’s Orb and Sceptre March and Coronation Te Deum, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s O taste and see and Old Hundredth Psalm Tune (All people that on earth do dwell).
By Caroline Shenton
Writing a book also means talking about it. A lot. Over the last nine months since publication, I have given around thirty talks about #parliamentburns, as the book is known on Twitter, to groups large and small, here and abroad, and in huge lecture theatres as well as at a pub, an art gallery, and in someone’s front room with a greedy labrador in attendance (actually one of my favourite venues).
On 2 June 1953 Queen Elizabeth II took her coronation oath at Westminster Abbey. Since her accession on 6 February 1952 aged 25, following the death of her father King George VI, the day had been planned in great detail. Our Who’s Who editors take a look at the people who helped to create that historical day.
By Gill Bennett
Who would want to be a Cabinet minister? Clearly, all ambitious politicians entertain some hope of high, if not the highest office. But I am asking the question in a more rhetorical sense. For in the almost universal cynicism, if not downright hostility, to politicians generally and government ministers in particular that pervades the media and much of the general public, I think that too few people stop to consider what a difficult job it is.