Somerville Magazine 2020

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Clinicals trials against COVID-19

The healing power of gardens

100 years of degrees for women

Lessons from Black Lives Matter

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Contents Principal’s Message

3

News and People

4

Commemorating Somervillians

5

Cover Story: Natural Magic with Head Gardener Sophie Walwin

6

Putting the brakes on COVID-19: an interview with Sir Marc Feldmann

10

Annie Sutherland: The Consolations of Isolation

14

Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Year in Music

16

Nadia Awad: Action is Better than Words

18

Looking Back on Somerville at 140

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Gill Bennett: Reflections of a Whitehall Historian

26

COVID-19: Somervillians Stepping Up

29

Julie Summers: Dressed for War – the Story of Audrey Withers

30

Jo Innes: A Fever and a Familiar Past – Where Typhus and COVID-19 Overlap

34

What Will Survive of Us is Love: Doreen Boyce’s Lockdown Diary

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Charity Registration number: 1139440

Editorial: Matt Phipps Design: Laura Hart

Jane Robinson: Meet the Pioneers – 100 Years of Degrees for Women

Somerville College Woodstock Road OX2 6HD Telephone +44 (0)1865 270600 www.some.ox.ac.uk

Cover photo: John Cairns

Contact: communications@some.ox.ac.uk

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Principal’s Message I

am delighted to share this issue of the Somerville magazine with you – and not merely because of its wonderful contents. We have all learned the importance of keeping in touch this year, and staying connected has assumed an ever greater significance for all of us.

For Somerville, it was very much a year of two halves. We started in celebratory mode, commemorating our 140th birthday with a fantastic birthday dinner featuring words from Shirley Williams, Esther Rantzen and others.

Photo by John Cairns

We also found time for a trip to India to sign a fiveyear partnership between the Oxford India Centre and multinational agribusiness UPL. The new Sustainability Fund will finance research on climate change, clean energy and food and water security, dovetailing with the efforts of our new Sustainability Working Group.

But, of course, in January everything changed – everywhere, for everyone – and like everyone else we began the hard work of adapting to the much-vaunted ‘new normal’.

So, the magazine you now hold in your hands is a reflection of those two worlds, before and after COVID-19.

You must read on for stories about our fantastic medical Fellows and the work they have been doing in the fight against COVID-19. Also, look out for the pieces contributed by our Fellows in History and English, who deduce powerful lessons for today’s problems from the past.

Following Voltaire, Sophie advises us to ‘cultivate our gardens’ like her hero, Candide. It is advice that works on a number of levels as we consider the role that not only biodiversity and sustainability will play in rebuilding the world after COVID-19, but also the new, more deeply rooted mode of living that lockdown has taught us.

But read on, too, for stories of hope and happiness – of holding onto one’s hat with indomitable Vogue editor Audrey Withers or singing through lockdown with the members of the Somerville Music Society.

Finally, if the gardens of the college are a place of sanctuary, the events of the past few months have reminded us all that the walls of a college like ours do not exist to keep the world out, but to offer shelter and protection – and to extend thereby the promise of a better world.

Of course, if you put these stories side by side, you realise they are not so different, after all. Underpinning them all is the same marriage of intellect with the determination to remake the world as a better, fairer place – just as it has done for the past 140 years of Somerville’s life.

To that end, I am so proud of the work being done by our students to support the BLM movement, of our new BAME scholarships and of the refugee events that are helping to deliver on our unswerving promise to include the excluded, even as the world changes all around us.

Speaking of continuity, what better way to illustrate it than through the brilliant work of our newly arrived Head Gardener, Sophie Walwin, who joined us this year from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew?

So, whether you are one of our oldest friends or a 2020 leaver, I hope you recognise your college in the following pages. And I hope you take a little of that Somerville spirit with you in the coming year, wherever you may go.

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NEWS AND PEOPLE Professor Damian Tyler has been awarded an Honorary Skou Professorship in recognition of his collaborative work with the MR Research Centre at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

Professor Natalia Nowakowska has won the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies’ George Blazyca Prize for her book King Sigismund of Poland and Martin Luther: The Reformations Before Confessionalisation.

Aditi Lahiri

Fellows and staff Professor Aditi Lahiri, FBA, was awarded a CBE for her services to the Study of Linguistics in December. Professor Lahiri has also been appointed Chair of the Faculty of Linguistics and Philology, having previously acted as its founding Chair in 2008.

Professor Marc Feldmann, Director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, was awarded the 2020 Tang Prize for Biopharmaceutical Science for his discovery of anti-TNF therapy with Sir Ravinder Maini – see news story, page 10.

Professor Matthew Wood was elected a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences for his ground-breaking research in the field of RNA-based precision medicines for rare, inherited neurological diseases.

Professor Almut Suerbaum has been elected to a three-year term as the Chair of the Faculty Board of Medieval and Modern Languages, the largest Modern Languages department in the Englishspeaking world.

Dr Radhika Khosla, Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, won the Environment Research Letters journal award for her co-authored paper on the future of India’s energy and emissions.

Althea Sovani (2018, Classics with Oriental Studies) was awarded the Chancellor’s Latin Prose Prize for her translation from Runciman’s Sicily.

Alumni Margaret Casely-Hayford (1980, Jurisprudence) and Dame Elan Closs Stephens (1966, English) were elected as Honorary Fellows, our highest recognition for alumni and associates who have achieved distinction in public or professional life.

Students The Somerville football team raised over £2,000 to support women and children suffering domestic abuse by running 2,509km during lockdown.

Fifth-year student Aaron Henry (2015, Medicine) has been working with the Jenner Institute to help deliver the Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial.

Raphael Reinbold (2017, Bioscience) won the Lilly Prize for Excellence in Organic Chemistry Research 2018-2019 from the Department of Chemistry.

First years Nadia Awad (2019, History), Danielle Welbeck (2019, Music), Ibtihaaj Mohamoud (2019, English) and Cara Moran (2019, English) raised £135,145 in one month for the National Lawyers Guild to support Black Lives Matter protesters – read more on p.18

Professor Benjamin Thompson has been appointed Associate Head for Education of the Humanities Division, where he will coordinate undergraduate teaching and learning across Oxford’s ten humanities faculties.

Margaret Casely-Hayford Photo by Dan Kennedy

Emma Kirkby (1966, Lit. Hum.) has been presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2019 for her outstanding contribution to musicmaking.

June Raine (1971, Physiology) became the interim Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Agency (MHRA) on 23 September 2019 Robin Mednick (née Henry) (1976, PPE) received the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal for founding Pencils for Kids from Canada’s Governor General in 2018.

Thérèse Coffey (1989, Chemistry) was appointed Secretary of State at the Department for Work & Pensions on 8 September 2019. Thérèse was previously Minister of State at the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

Senior Research Fellow Patricia Kingori has helped establish a new Visiting Scholarship for BAME early-career academics in a partnership between Somerville and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.

Althea Sovani

Lucy Powell (1993, Chemistry) was appointed Shadow Minister for Business and Consumers on 9th April 2020.

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Commemorating

Somervillians who have died Commemoration underlines the relationship between Somerville and its members, one founded on the values, ideals and history we share as a community. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Somerville’s Commemoration Service was substituted this year with an abridged online video Service released on June 27th, which featured a short address from the Principal and music from the choir.

In more ordinary times, the Service commemorates Somerville’s founders, governors and major benefactors, and especially our alumni who have died during the past year.

The full list of names to be commemorated has been published on the college website, and a commemoration booklet of obituaries has also been published.

We invite all Somervillians to join us next year, when we hope we will be able to meet again in the Chapel for the annual Service. We particularly invite close families and Somervillian friends of those who have died to join us.

If you know of any Somervillians who have died recently but are not listed here, please contact Liz Cooke (elizabeth.cooke@ some.ox.ac.uk).

Fellows

Jane Elizabeth Kister

(as of June 2020)

née Bridge (1963; Mary Somerville Research Fellow, 1969; Fellow & Tutor in Mathematics 1972-77) on 1 December 2019 Aged 75

Alumni

Crystal Heather Ashton née Champion (1947) on 15 September 2019 Irena Dorota Backus née Kostarska (1968) on 14 July 2019 Vivienne Blackburn (1949) on 31 March 2020 Victoria Anne Braithwaite (1985) on 30 September 2019 Audrey Butler née Clark (1946) on 12 May 2020 Nina Valerie Cartwright née Bearman (1961) on 7 July 2019 Paulla Bolingbroke Catmur née Johnson (1949) on 21 August 2019 Gabrielle (Gaby) Eve Charing (1962) on 24 May 2020 Rosemary de Courcy Jones née Eldridge (1948) on 11 May 2019 Claire Marie Donovan née Baker (1971) on 5 June Anne Driver née Browne (1942) on 15 June 2019 Audrey Faber née Thompson (1944) on 2 July 2019 Elizabeth Lear Falconer (1948) on 25 March 2020 Barbara Evelyn Forrai née Lockwood (1946) on 4 March 2020 Elizabeth Patricia Goulding (1960) on 29 October 2019 Leonora Helen Goulty (1944) on 26 January 2020 Antonia Gransden née Morland (1947) on 18 January 2020 Florence Helen Grellier née Brindle (1949) on 26 April 2020 Dorothy Mary Grodecki née Vernon (1943) on 19 April Patricia Jean Hall (1943) on 25 April 2019 Rosemary Daphne Harvey née Hawke (1954) on 29 January 2020 Ruth Eleanor van Heyningen née Treverton (1948) on 24 October 2019 Judith Hockaday (1973) on 24 May 2019 Heather Joan Hooton née Shelley (1951) on 5 November 2019 Hannah Elizabeth Houghton-Berry née Sunderland (1980) in 2019 Jane Mary Howard née Waldegrave(1952) on 6 May 2019 Madeline Ruth Huxstep née Bishop (1939) on 22 October 2019 Caroline Anne Florence Kenny née Arthur (1956) on 17 November 2019 Jean Brown King née Davidson (1954) on 7 May 2019 Anne Marie Prom Krassowska née Olesen (1961) on 26 June 2019 Audrey Littlewood née Charnley (1950) on 29 December 2018 Rosemary Evelyn Millard née Troughton (1950) on 14 December 2019 Kathleen Elizabeth Moore (1946) on 1 January 2020 Joan (Joanie) Emilie Philpott (1943) on 11 November 2019 Mary Ann Poulter née Smallbone (1965) on 26 March 2020 Frances Vera Playfer née Tindall (1951) on 21 July 2019 Joan Mary Richards (1951) on 6 April 2019 Sara (Sally) Margaret Helen Roberts née Hyder (1955) on 22 April 2019 Jane Salisbury née Terry (1953) on 14 April 2019 Susan Deborah (Debbie) Sander (1970) on 16 May 2019 Celia Scully née Shopland (1954) on 20 January 2019 Jennifer Rosemary Patricia Semark née Bullen (1956) in March 2019 Felicity Ann Olga Howard Sieghart née Baer (1944) on 28 May 2019 Anne Simpson (1955) on 6 January 2020 Jennifer (Jenny) Jane Skidmore née Sargent (1969) on 1 October 2019 Maureen Mary Bridget Sleeman née Rough (1980) on 30 April 2019 Jennifer Mary Taylor née Everest (1954) on 15 November 2019 Janet Quintrell Treloar (1958) on 30 October 2019 Mary Amity Williamson née Mallinson (1942) on 16 April 2019 Victoria Avril Jean Wotherspoon née Edwards (1946) on 25 July 2019 Susan Wright née Leys (1960) on 7 November 2019

Aged 90 Aged 69 Aged 89 Aged 52 Aged 91 Aged 81 Aged 89 Aged 76 Aged 91 Aged 71 Aged 94 Aged 93 Aged 89 Aged 93 Aged 81 Aged 93 Aged 91 Aged 89 Aged 93 Aged 93 Aged 84 Aged 101 Aged 89 Aged 90 Aged 57 Aged 85 Aged 90 Aged 82 Aged 84 Aged 80 Aged 86 Aged 89 Aged 92 Aged 94 Aged 74 Aged 87 Aged 86 Aged 83 Aged 85 Aged 67 Aged 83 Aged 81 Aged 91 Aged 84 Aged 69 Aged 58 Aged 84 Aged 79 Aged 94 Aged 92 Aged 78

Natural Magic

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head gardener Sophie Walwin on how gardens keep us going

Sophie Walwin joined Somerville as Head Gardener in 2019. Writing here after several months of lockdown gardening, Sophie discusses how the endless renewal of gardens brings inspiration in times of hardship, and how a sustainable vision for the Somerville gardens will vouchsafe that inspiration for years to come.

T

here was a moment in mid-April when I went back into college for the first time since lockdown. You may remember what the weather was like then: baking skies and streets newly silent.

On the news every day were fresh updates about infection rates and harrowing stories from around the world.

But alongside all that scared us so much came other reports: of Venetian canals running clear for the first time in living memory and air pollution evaporating over major cities. And then there were the stories of all the inventive things people were doing to occupy themselves – one of which was gardening. Indeed, people were gardening so much that the online stores of all the major garden centres were stripped bare.

I stood there in main quad, listening to the song of a waxwing that had taken up residence in a nearby cedar, and wondered what it is about gardens that appeals to us so much in times of trouble. Part of the appeal, surely, is the proximity that gardening brings to continuity, change and renewal – reminding us, just as the clear water of the canals did, that the natural world is still there however bad things may seem. But there is something more to it, I think. Something about the way we participate in the process. The only way I can explain it is by describing how, as I stood there, my mind was already

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noticing things, jobs to be done, plans to be implemented, my mind slipping into the familiar grooves of the work, absorbed in the details yet with one eye on the bigger picture.

This balance between fine detail and the long perspective is what first attracted me to gardening. I had just graduated in Fine Art when my friend started a market garden at which, increasingly drawn to the outdoors, I began to volunteer. My love of plants grew rapidly as I came to appreciate not only their beauty and diversity, but also their ingenuity, their ability to adapt and survive. Soon after, I began volunteering at the University of Bristol Botanic Gardens and then embarked on a National Diploma in Horticulture.

I completed my training at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, whilst working as a botanical horticulturalist in Kew’s beautiful, Grade Onelisted Temperate House. Once my contract was up, I enrolled on their famously challenging three-year Diploma. Combining full-time work in the gardens with lectures and coursework was demanding, but it was also a privilege and a joy to be there. I could work in the herbarium and library, explore the grounds day and night, and study with some exceptionally talented botanists, horticulturalists and garden designers.

All of this experience has fed into my plans for the Somerville gardens – plans which I am fortunate to be implementing with my amazing Assistant Gardener, Dave Townsend. These

ideas have been developing since I first visited Somerville and saw the enormous potential for balancing different scales of planting between the large main quadrangle and smaller gardens like Darbishire Quad.

Throughout, I have been conscious of the need to respect and honour the genius loci or spirit of the place. After all, in what some might consider a fairly typical show of pragmatism, the Somerville gardens have never been purely ornamental. In the early days of the college, the gardens also played an important role in feeding the students and staff, hosting a kitchen garden and grazing space for the college’s two cows, donkey, pig and pony. And in World War One, several large tents were pitched here when the college was requisitioned to serve as the Third General Southern Hospital; for those injured officers, the garden was a refuge, a place to take solace and breathe.

Gardening allows us to recognise that past as we consider the future, to incorporate new ideas while honouring previous generations.

Of all our plans for the future, three topics are particularly worth mentioning here, and those are climate change, sustainability and trees.

Sadly, I do have to factor in climate change when I design new planting schemes now, choosing plants that suit our new and evolving circumstances and which can survive both periods of drought and the wet, mild winters that are becoming more frequent in the SouthEast of England. I will also have to consider

I felt my mind slipping into the familiar grooves of the work, absorbed in the details yet with one eye on the bigger picture.

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changing the substrate entirely in some areas to accommodate that new aesthetic.

It’s almost time to think about pruning the lavenders which the bees have been enjoying all summer.

As for sustainability, I am delighted that the college has responded to the growing pressure on global resources with its creation of the Sustainability Working Group. As a member, I have been proud to switch to modern, greener horticultural processes, including the use of peat-free compost and the creation of our own high-quality mulch.

We are also using seeping hoses more now, to replace the need for wasteful sprinklers, as well as growing many plants from seed to reduce the carbon emissions from transportation.

Considering the needs of local fauna, I am also hoping to develop some wilder areas by making use of informal plantings and areas of long grass and meadow, primarily as a habitat for invertebrates. As always, I balance this against the need to keep key areas of the gardens presentable, with more variety than ever in terms of flowers, foliage, texture, structure and, importantly, movement – plantings that will shift and surprise you as the seasons change. I really like using signage to explain how different parts of the grounds are developing to help with this.

Sophie uses signage to inform visitors about changes to the gardens

Finally, regarding trees, this is where the really long view of the gardener comes into play.

There is an old Greek proverb that says, ‘A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.’ Leaving aside the fact that I’m not an old man, I can relate. Our mature tree collection is declining; if you look into the crown of our tulip tree on the main lawn, for example, you’ll see braces supporting its limbs. Fortunately our new tree fund, generously supported by several alumni, will enable us to plant successors to this and other trees in advance of their demise.

So as summer draws to a close – as the swallows leave for Africa and I start to think about ordering restorative Spring bulbs or pruning the lavender which the bees have been enjoying all summer – the same themes resonate in my gardening as back in April.

Change, growth and renewal, the absorbing worlds of detail and perspective, the shape of the future emerging from the past.

All of this provides comfort at times like this.

Who knows, perhaps that is what Voltaire had in mind when he placed the eponymous hero of Candide in a garden at the end of his novel.

Certainly, Candide’s refrain in the novel’s final lines feels as relevant as ever; after enduring all the cruelty and misfortune that the world could throw at him, he decides that the wisest response we can make to adversity is to ‘cultivate our garden,’ with all the hope and determination that entails.

Good advice, I’m sure you’ll agree.

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A joy for all seasons: Professor Fiona Stafford on the timeless appeal of the Somerville gardens

P

eople probably notice the Somerville gardens most during the spring. First the drift of snowdrops beside the Chapel, then the half-moon beds of miniature narcissi on the way between Wolfson and the Hall, before the great burst of yellow daffodils outside House, so bright that you can see them through the arches as soon as you come into College. By Trinity, we take for granted that on a hot day, exam nerves can be eased by taking time out with the sun and the geraniums in the Quad, or (speaking as a redhead) under a shady tree. In Michaelmas it’s only too easy to forget that as the Freshers arrive with carloads of boxes and bags, the gardens are shifting into their autumn wardrobe of tawny leaves and late-flowering, jewel-bright borders. Often the gardens are just a backdrop to all the personal dramas unfolding across the College, and yet when people pause to look at - rather than through or beside the flowers and trees, the benefits

are incalculable. The abundant colours, scents and natural forms, the butterflies, birds and tiny insects all stir a sense of perpetual renewal within a reassuring cycle of continuity. Somervillians who were in Oxford five, fifteen, fifty years ago will still see trees they recognise and flowers that remind them of their own student dramas. The scent of the great magnolias by the library can send people back through decades in seconds.

But the gardens are forward-looking, too. Planting is always a pledge to make everyone’s future that bit brighter, that bit better: the Somerville gardeners are agents of hope.

Currently, all the gardens in the world are quietly contributing to the fight against environmental catastrophe. In cities like Oxford, plants mitigate carbon emissions, air pollution and urban heat, while offering habitats to a vulnerable species. They have a vital role to play in tackling anxiety, loneliness and depression, by creating inviting safe

spaces, where people can meet, chat, read, exercise, play games. It’s surprising how many problems can be eased by trees. Somerville is lucky to have its own green spaces, even luckier to have such dedicated gardeners as Sophie and Dave, constantly working to keep the plants healthy. It’s not just a matter of mowing, weeding, pruning, digging: plant diseases are on the increase and the unpredictable effects of climate change demand constant vigilance and adaptability. I was so sad to see the demise of the cavernous mulberry tree and the exuberant lime in the past year. As old trees succumb, new ones need to be set to benefit generations of students in the 22nd century. Just imagine the open-armed welcome that a slim sapling planted in 2020 will offer to freshers arriving in 2120.

Professor Stafford FBA, FRSE is the author of, among other works, The Long, Long Life of Trees (2016) and The Brief Life of Flowers (2018).

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Putting the brakes

on COVID-19 An Interview with Professor Sir Marc Feldmann

COVID-19 is, by all accounts, a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

Fortunately, our senior medical Fellows like Marc Feldmann have been coordinating a oncein-a-lifetime response to the crisis, including new clinical trials, advice and research partnerships.

A

brief read of our Somervillians Stepping Up feature (p.29) is enough to confirm that there is hardly an institution or place of work where Somervillians have not been making a positive impact since the pandemic began. In this feature, however, we have taken the opportunity to focus on the profound contribution made by our senior medical Fellows to the global fight against COVID-19, including an in-depth interview with Sir Marc Feldmann, winner of the 2020 Tang Prize for Biopharmaceutical Science.

In this interview, Sir Marc takes us through how anti-TNF therapy works and why it is being tested as a coronavirus treatment, the difficult process of running clinical trials in the middle of a pandemic and how soon life might go back to normal.

First things first, can you possibly explain in layman’s terms how anti-TNF works?

Well, if you picture inflammation as a little car race, you’ve got six cars all racing each other to deliver the inflammation. Now, our theory was that if you took just one car out of that race – in this case, the cell-signalling protein or cytokine known as TNF – then the inflammation would stop. At the time most people thought this was crazy because they assumed – quite reasonably – that the other five cars were still there, doing their thing, and inflammation would ensue. However, we had evidence that suggested removing TNF slowed the other cars down. It was very unexpected, but that’s the point about science: often you have data that changes how you think about

Image provided by courtesy of the Goldlab Foundation

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everything, after which it’s your job to figure out why it works that way. You always have to follow the science.

And how did you decide anti-TNF could be effective against COVID-19?

It comes down to evolution. Every cell in our body has the same 20,000 genes strung out in their chromosomes within the nucleus. In some cells, certain genes are activated to do what that cell does, and in another cell it’s a different gene. Now, replicating all this information every time a cell divides is quite a burden, so there is a very important evolutionary principle that you don’t keep genetic instructions that have no use.

The upshot of this is that, in many different diseases, things are often done exactly the same way. That is why more than 10 diseases are approved for anti-TNF, with almost as many more responding that are still unapproved. So when a new disease like COVID-19 comes along, it makes sense to ask whether it’s using the same pathway as existing related diseases.

Blood tests of COVID patients confirmed that TNF was abundantly produced, while a new tool called bioinformatics, which analyses databases of computerised records, confirmed that inflammatory bowel disease patients using anti-TNF had very good outcomes from COVID-19.

Having established the justification for a trial, what was the next stage?

Well, the most difficult part of any trial is convincing people your trial is worth pursuing.

This was especially true with COVID-19,

because it was a new disease, and there was a lot of pressure from various parts of the government to get something done and a lot of money allocated to UK R&I. So my role in these initial stages was alerting people that anti-TNF hadn’t been considered and then convincing them that a trial was necessary.

That’s where the data I just mentioned came in: we used it to co-author a rationale that was published in The Lancet in early April, with further support coming in May following reports of improved outcomes for rheumatological patients on anti-TNF.

You always have to follow the science.

ADAPTING ESSENTIAL CARE: PROFESSOR RAJESH THAKKER Within a few days of lockdown, Somerville’s Professorial Fellow and May Professor of Medicine, Rajesh Thakker was asked to contribute to a COVID-19 response report by the Royal College of Physicians. Acting in his capacity as President of the Society for Endocrinology, Professor Thakker solicited responses from 27 senior academic and clinical endocrinologists.

The combined feedback was translated into a report on the effects of COVID-19 on current clinical services and activities, and how the various branches of medicine propose to deliver patient care, teaching and research in the future. Professor Thakker has also co-authored an article on the management of neuroendocrine tumours during the COVID-19 pandemic to establish the critical emergency investigations and treatment. The report was published in the European Journal of Endocrinology in June 2020. Finally, Professor Thakker provided advice and input to two patient groups (AMEND, for which he is patron, and ParathyroidUK) for their Frequently Asked Questions in regards to the pandemic.

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Once you persuaded people of the need for a trial, I guess the next stage was to design it?

We [will] have an equilibrium where people are more conscious of how to behave and protect others

Pretty much, although in this case there are actually two trials – one to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-TNF at the beginning of the disease, and one when the disease is more advanced. We’ve actually started with the second of those trials because it is important to get results quickly with a deadly disease like this, and the best place to do that is the hospitals.

Our hope with the hospital trial is that anti-TNF will stop patients experiencing respiratory issues and needing oxygen, so they don’t progress to intensive care, where they face a much higher mortality risk. Huge credit must go here to Professor Duncan Richards of the Oxford Clinical Trial Unit for designing the trial at the practical and regulatory level, because there are many, many steps to negotiate between the initial concept and getting it done safely.

NUCLEIC ACID THERAPY AGAINST COVID-19: PROFESSOR MATTHEW WOOD Matthew Wood, who is Deputy Head of the Medical Sciences Division, Professor of Neuroscience and a Somerville Professorial Fellow, is also the founder and interim executive director of the recently established UK Nucleic Acid Therapy Accelerator (NATA), based on the Harwell Campus south of Oxford. Over the course of March/April 2020, Matthew is leading an international research consortium comprising investigators from NATA, Oxford, The Crick Institute, clinical centres in Germany and Italy, and a commercial partner based in Boston USA, with the goal of developing the first oligonucleotide drug therapy for Covid-19 and evaluating this in a first-in-man clinical trial within 12 months. Uniquely, oligonucleotide drug design developed

by Oxford/NATA will be fine-tuned based on SARS-CoV-2 RNA structure data emerging from The Crick Institute. The team has received significant funding for this work from UKRI, and the project, while at an early stage, is on track to meet its goals.

And what about the second trial?

If you think about the coronavirus epidemic, it has two big problems. The first problem is the disease itself and its impact on individuals, both in terms of mortality and long-term health issues. The second problem is that this is an economic disaster, and the economic disaster comes in several flavours: people are no longer working, those working in public-facing roles will find it difficult to carry out their work, there are serious ramifications for mental health and, of course, with the hospitals converted to COVID-wards, all our other diseases have been badly treated for the past several months.

So you could actually argue that the knock-on mortality of other disease treatment being deferred is actually going to have a more profound impact than COVID-19 itself.

That’s what the second trial is about. Its main objective is to keep people out of hospital, because if you keep people out of hospital you relieve the medical issue, but you also address the socio-economic issue. You could ask, why aren’t we doing this trial first, as it’s clearly very important to keep people out of hospital and rescue the economy. The answer is that this type of trial is much harder to organise and run.

Fortunately, Duncan Richards came up with a good way for us to conduct this trial outside the hospital environment. He found a very useful organisation called Hospital at Home, who send out hospital consultants to visit patients at home, and they’re kitted out with all the equipment to make a diagnosis and initiate treatment.

You also have a role with the SET-C, providing COVID advice to the government.

Can you tell me a bit more about that and how the SET-C differs from SAGE? SAGE actually has a very difficult job to do because it is so multi-disciplinary, which means that much of the time you are experts discussing topics about which you have no direct knowledge. The SET-C (Science in Emergencies Tasking – COVID) was set up by the Royal Society to support SAGE by ensuring that they and others have access to the right information in emergencies like this.

That’s not to say members of the SET-C purport to know everything, by the way. But we can

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THE SPIKE TRIALS: PROFESSOR DANIEL ANTHONY ET AL The SPIKE trials were conceived by Dr Bobojon Nazarov (2011, MSc Pharmacology) in March 2020, following his observation that existing studies had shown two proven drugs, Nafamostat and Camostat, to block the entry of coronavirus into lung cells. Dr Nazarov partnered with three other Somervillians, Professor Daniel Anthony, Dr Emma Ladd (2007, Medicine) and Dr Suzie Anthony, as well as researchers from the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, to see if these drugs might save lives while a vaccine is developed. The first trial, for which Professor Anthony is acting as Scientific Lead, will seek to evaluate the effectiveness of Nafamostat in preventing clinical progression of the disease. The second and larger of the two trials, for which the four are co-investigators, is being sponsored by Cancer Research UK with support from medical research charity LifeArc, and will evaluate whether the pancreatitis drug Camostat could also limit progression of the virus.

find out who does through the academic networks at our disposal, and we can co-opt more experts as needs evolve. We also ensure our guidance remains clear and accessible by limiting how much literature we produce and always publishing our guidance on the Royal Society website a week after Government receives it, and in scientific journals where appropriate.

Pulling back a little, how do you think the world will look in six months’ times. Will we have a vaccine?

I think the vaccine issue is important, because life won’t get back to normal until there are vaccines. But it would be unprecedented to have a vaccine in six months’ time; most experts agree 2021 is more likely. That’s not to say it’s impossible – unprecedented things can happen. However, I think it will be more likely that, come December, we have an equilibrium where people are more conscious of how to behave and protect others. Masks will have a significant role to play there, I think – the advice from the Royal Society, much of which was formulated by Professor Melinda Mills here in Oxford, has been very clear on that.

Of course, there is a cultural issue to negotiate here, which is that the British public are not used to wearing masks and the British government is no longer in a strong position, following its treatment of Mr Cummings, to tell us we’re all in this together, so let’s all wear masks. However, this doesn’t change the fact that those countries which have experienced SARS and these types of outbreaks in the past have done really well with COVID-19 because they are used to wearing masks. Taiwan, for example, didn’t have a lockdown, but it did have a very well-observed practice of maskusage, resulting in a total of 7 deaths for a population of 24 million.

So that is the position I am encouraging Somerville to adopt: for indoor communal spaces, wearing masks should be routine. In a small community like Somerville, where you’ve got a lot of switched-on people, compliance with that will be around 98%, with the other 2% of people not complying simply because they left their masks at home. But wearing a mask outdoors when there is a risk of meeting people outdoors as done in Taiwan is a good idea. That’s what I do.

Taiwan didn’t have a lockdown, but thanks to masks they had a total of 7 deaths with a population of 24 million

14 Somerville Magazine

The Consolations of

Isolation

Somerville medievalist and Rosemary Woolf Fellow, Dr Annie Sutherland takes a moment to meditate upon the ‘vita contemplativa’ of medieval anchorites and what lessons their radically inclusive isolation hold for us today.

D

uring this unexpected chapter in our global history, we have all had to adapt to living in radically altered circumstances. One of the most radical alterations has been that of learning to live in enforced isolation in our own homes. At very short notice, we have had to become content with seclusion in a socially orientated world.

Of course, we are not the first to face isolation.

Whether voluntary or enforced, solitude is – and always has been – a way of life for many. In fact, reflection on practices of solitude across history can provide us with fruitful ways of conceptualising responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a medievalist in the current context, I have found myself thinking about the lives of religious recluses in the Christian West.

Considering the ways in which they negotiated their isolation has the potential to inform our own responses to seclusion.

Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, the English landscape was peopled with an abundance of women and men known as ‘anchorites’. Such individuals (more commonly women than men) lived lives of voluntary reclusion, enclosed within small structures (‘cells’) often built to adjoin the walls of their local church. Thus isolated, they were required to spend their time in prayer, contemplation, and the judicious dispensing of spiritual guidance to passers-by through a small curtained window in the outer wall of their cell. At no point, however, were they to welcome visitors into their private space. Once enclosed, an anchorite Left: A stained glass window from Norwich cathedral depicting medieval anchoress Julian Of Norwich.

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was expected to remain so until her death. In common with many individuals within many religious traditions, they practised extreme social distancing as a way of life centuries before the COVID-19 pandemic enshrined it as a medical imperative.

In today’s situation, we have all had to work hard to adapt to a solitary way of life for which, unlike anchorites, we have had little training.

One of our principal endeavours has been to find ways of remaining connected with each other despite our physical distance, an endeavour which has been considerably eased by the existence of the internet as a means of facilitating virtual interactions unhampered by the obstacles of space and time. In this context, one of the most high-profile initiatives has been ‘Together At Home’, a series of free online concerts performed by some of the world’s leading contemporary musicians, live-streamed by the artists from their own homes directly into ours. As the name suggests, the initiative celebrates the ways in which we can maintain our sense of community even when our doors remain closed to each other (and I know Somerville has been doing something similar with its ‘Somerville at Home’ series.)

This recognition of the fact that we can be meaningfully ‘together’ even when geographically apart is not, however, new to the Twenty-First Century. The enclosed anchorites of the Middle Ages were experienced practitioners of what we might call inclusive solitude; they knew very well what it was to be ‘Together At Home’. For despite their obvious isolation, they were deeply embedded in the communities of which they were a part.

As their cells were often adjacent to their local church, they found themselves at the centre of their village, town or city, situated at the heart of networks of exchange and communication (in fact, some anchorites gained a reputation as incurable gossips, such was their social positioning).

Living in such exposed solitude, the anchorite who did not want to succumb to gossip had to work hard to maintain the spiritual and mental discipline necessary to the effective practice of reclusion. As one twelfth-century text for anchorites puts it, it is insufficient ‘to confine the body behind walls while the mind roams at random’. But, assuming that she was able

(and many, it seems, were) to exercise the required restraint and necessary self-control, the anchorite was encouraged to cultivate a radical openness to the world around her. Quite literally ‘locked-down’, she was to embrace enclosure and isolation as an opportunity to forge new communities grounded in care and mutual support. While this might be achieved through the offering of advice or the provision of a listening ear from behind a curtained window, the most important way in which she was to cultivate community was through the practice of intercession. Where we have the internet to mitigate the impact of social distancing, the anchorite connected with her community via a network of prayer. In fact, she was encouraged to conceptualise her cell – and her own body – as a holding bay for the needy, the abject and the disadvantaged. As one thirteenth-century book of advice suggests, when engaged in solitary prayer, whether at day or night, she was to: ‘Gather into her heart all those who are ill and wretched, the misery that the poor suffer, the torments that prisoners endure where they lie

Above: A bishop blesses an anchorite as she enters her cell. Pontifical, England, 1st quarter of the 15th century BL Lansdowne MS 451, f. 76v

16 Somerville Magazine

Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Year in Music

A new title page to Serenus de Cressey’s 1670 edition of Julian of Norwich’s XVI Revelations of Divine Love, written by an unknown hand c.1675

heavily weighed down with iron… feel compassion for those who are attacked by strong temptations. She should take all their sorrows into her heart and sigh to our Lord, so that he may take pity on them and look towards them with the eye of his mercy.’

Far from being an exclusive space, the cell here – as well as the anchorite’s body – become radically inclusive, welcoming and nurturing. Isolation becomes an opportunity to imagine new communities and new ways of being ‘together’. The anchorite was, in fact, to think of her cell as an open space, a ‘house without walls’ as another medieval text puts it; the architectural equivalent of the exposed stable in which Christ was born. In this context, we are reminded of Somerville’s own mission to include the excluded, a mission which seems more pressing now than ever.

How do musicians make the transition from in-person concerts and rehearsals to the disembodied world of lockdown listening?

Somerville Music Society’s Melissa Chang (2018, Music), Trina Banerjee (2019, Music) and Finlay Dove (2018, Music) join us to try and find the answer.

W

hat is it that makes Somerville music different? You could say it’s our openness. The Freshers’ Recital hosted by the Somerville Music Society (SMS) at the start of the year certainly reflected that, as new performers were welcomed with an evening of vocal music, jazz classics, hymns and spirituals.

Books of guidance written for anchorites suggest that, through rigorous discipline in the practice of solitude, they were able to become ‘birds of heaven’, soaring freely in the skies while apparently earth-bound and enclosed. While we may not have reached these heights in recent months, many of us have found solace in isolation, and have begun to reimagine ways of living openly and ‘together’. Like the twelfth-century anchorite Wulfric of Haselbury, it may be that, in our lives of unexpected solitude, we have ‘found a vast space within narrow bounds’.

Or you could say it’s our eclecticism.

Stemming in equal parts from the inclusivity of our non-denominational Sunday Choral Contemplations and the sheer passion of those involved, eclecticism is, perhaps, our defining trait. Pre-lockdown, our musical forays this year encompassed everything from the upper-voice Shakespeare choruses to Hindustani classical music, by way of the Aseda gospel choir and an evening of vocal music by women composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Dr Sutherland is co-editor with Professor Almut Suerbaum of Medieval Temporalities, a collection of essays on the experience of time in the medieval West by members of the Somerville Medieval Research Group, which will be published by Boydell and Brewer in 2021.

Or perhaps it’s the accomplishment of our players. That includes individuals like SMS Co-President Max Rodney (2018, Music), who brought our Michaelmas programme to a beautiful finale conducting Fauré’s Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50, and Melissa Chang,

Somerville Magazine 17

Somerville Supporters Lunch by John Cairns

who transformed the chapel into a veritable sonic cathedral with her rendition of Handel’s Organ Concerto. But it also includes the virtuosity of our group outings, such as the Somerville College Choir’s performance of Bach’s St John Passion or our carol service at the Savoy Chapel.

Of course, it’s really the combination of openness, eclecticism and accomplishment that makes Somerville music special – which is fortunate, since all those skills were called for when, in March 2020, the world went into lockdown.

As soon as that happened, the SMS went online with its ‘Lockdown Listening’ series.

Posting several videos on Facebook a week, students and alumni shared performances ranging from barbershop to jazz, Indian classical music, metal, a DJ set and massive choral recreations of contemporary anthems like Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide and Seek’.

The Somerville College Choir was not far behind. With the expert guidance (not to mention genius editing skills) of Director of Chapel Music Will Dawes,

the choir painstakingly stitched together several stunning performances for Chapel Director Monty Sharma’s (2018, DPhil Engineering Science) virtual Choral Contemplations. Highlights included Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat by Xiaoyi Ouyang (2017, Classics) and an adaptation of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’. The entire series can be viewed on the Somerville College YouTube channel.

Looking back on all the rehearsals and performances, as well as the resilience shown by our musicians during lockdown, it’s difficult to say just how poignant and meaningful this year has been. We would like to thank all our performers, and especially our leavers, for bringing such harmony into all our lives.

It’s difficult to convey what a poignant and meaningful year it has been.

Scan this code with your smartphone to view Lockdown Listening videos on the SMS Facebook Page

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Nadia Awad:

Action is better than words In May 2020, Somerville students Nadia Awad, Danielle Welbeck, Ibtihaaj Mohamoud and Cara Moran created a fundraiser to help support Black Lives Matter protesters.

After meeting their original fundraising goal in a matter of hours, they went on to raise £135,145. Here Nadia Awad considers why the fundraiser did so well and how Somerville and Oxford need to learn from the BLM movement.

‘W

eird’ is the only word that can accurately describe the last few months. I’ve just done a whole Oxford term from my bedroom, complete with occasional *surprise* appearances from my sisters at early morning tutorials (why were they even awake?).

With the universe narrowed to the size of your own four walls thanks to the lockdown, social media has become more important than ever for all of us - so when George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis Police on 25th May, there was no escape from seeing the brutality and horror of what had happened for black students like myself.

Those images are difficult enough for anyone to see, and comment duly began to flood in as the world reacted.

However, many of the responses around me seemed to be performative – words without actions or even the intention to take meaningful action. There were also those institutions or individuals that remained silent out of a fear of not being constructive, or perhaps simple complacency.

Posting on social media or changing your profile picture for a few days doesn’t achieve much in the scheme of things; activism requires action. This thought is what has spurred the protests around the world, and it’s also what prompted Danielle to suggest the idea of starting a fundraiser to Ibti, Cara and myself. We also had help from our friend Emma Schutze, another Somerville undergrad. As Danielle put it, ‘if these people online actually care, they will put their money where their mouths are’.

With the Minnesota Freedom Fund recommending fundraisers support other charities, we looked around and found the National Lawyers Guild. An organisation with an 80-year history, they became known for representing arrested demonstrators during the Civil Rights era and are defending protestors on the right side of history again today. Money donated to the fundraiser would help to support arrested protesters and the work of the NLG in defending them.

Things are different this time around Danielle wrote the Facebook post, and we launched the fundraiser with an initial goal of £2,000 in two weeks. We thought this was ambitious – until we raised the total in under two hours. At first it was our friends at Somerville who were donating, but with everyone glued to social media right now it started to take off. They shared it with their friends and their families, and soon it went around the world.

We couldn’t increase the fundraising goal fast enough to match the speed of contributions – every time we clicked refresh, the number was getting bigger and bigger. People donated £10,000 in the first 24 hours, and by the time the fundraiser ended we had helped to raise £135,145. It was absolutely staggering – we couldn’t believe it.

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From left to right: Ibtihaaj, Danielle, Nadia and Cara

I feel like we underestimated how many people would share our desire to take meaningful action. Things are different this time around. The visceral, harrowing nature of that video of George Floyd’s killing and of other acts of police violence have finally spurred a lot of people to take a proactive approach to anti-racism.

For me, it feels like change is finally happening – but we’re not there yet. As a black student at Oxford from a state school background, I’ve found that the institution itself has still not woken up to the fact it needs to be making proactive attempts to improve. We need to end the devil’s advocate culture that can sometimes exist.

Another trap that faculties, colleges and the university often get stuck in is asking minorities what they want, rather than investing time and money to generate a programme for change proactively. After all, Oxford is a pipeline that feeds people into some of the most influential jobs in society, so change there can have a huge impact.

One thing that has been great at Oxford is the help and solidarity I get from my peers. The Oxford African and Caribbean Society are wonderfully supportive, as is our JCR President Talisha Ariarasa. But they shouldn’t have to be great – it shouldn’t be the responsibility of students from minorities to support each other and create institutional change alongside

We underestimated how many people would share our desire to take meaningful action everything else we’re trying to learn and achieve at Oxford. It wasn’t us who created or benefitted from these structures. It’s time for the University to be honest about its past and present and take the initiative in changing its future.

What would my message to Somervillians be? You had the privilege of a fantastic education at Oxford, and now you have the knowledge and the social and cultural capital you need to change the world for the better. Challenge your own biases and other people’s; examine your day to day interactions with black people and people of colour. Speak up in the face of injustice and use your influence to back up words with action. Engage with black art, music, and culture to help you empathise with this struggle.

But most importantly of all: change before you are asked to.

20 Somerville Magazine

Many Happy Returns:

As we come to the end of our birthday year, one thing that has made us smile is thinking back to last October when we celebrated together at a wonderful birthday party.

The festivities began with speeches from our special guests, Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson, Baroness Shirley Williams and our former principals Dr Alice Prochaska and Dame Fiona Caldicott. Later, there was a chorus of happy birthday in a standing room-only dining hall, before the festivities ended with slices of a sumptuous birthday cake, generously commissioned for the occasion by Somervillian Basma Alireza (1991, PPE).

We can’t wait to be together again soon!

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“Today Somerville is, I’m delighted to see, at a stage of life where it can take up issues, address them, fight for them... To those who helped build this Somerville and are still building it today, our deep thanks for all you have achieved and all you will go on to achieve.”

Baroness Shirley Williams of Crosby (1948, PPE)

Photographs by Keith Barnes

22 Somerville Magazine

Meet the pioneers: 100 years of degrees for women

One hundred years since women won the right to graduate with full degrees from the University of Oxford, author Jane Robinson (English, 1978) looks back on how Somerville’s patient, optimistic and occasionally ‘bloody-minded’ pioneers won the argument for inclusive education.

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Students cycle in the quadrangle c.1930

P

atience, they say, is a virtue. No doubt we’ve all tried our best over the last few months, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a little frustrated when denied the luxury of autonomy. Of course, you realise what’s at stake, so buckle down and do the right thing.

But you’re ineluctably a Somervillian: someone who questions, likes to think for themselves and can be bloody-minded (dare I say it?) when the occasion arises. This is a tricky dilemma, which I’m sure you’re negotiating gracefully.

After all, our collective heritage as members of this college is one of pragmatism and optimism, no matter what the challenge.

The pioneers knew a great deal about patience.

They had to, operating at a time when women tended to be regarded as cardboard cut-outs.

In fact it can seem at times that the whole of 19th-century Britain was peopled by stereotypes. Think of a Victorian gentleman: he wears a top hat and stiff collar, has extravagant whiskers and carries a cane. All day he sits in a vast mahogany office, where banks of clerks endlessly transcribe verbiage in the background. His porcelain wife is installed in

their suburban villa, her stays too tightly laced for her to move; an innocent ‘angel in the house’ of whom nothing more is required than devotion to domestic duty.

Meanwhile the lower classes work industriously, grateful to keep their heads above water. Down in the depths, the poor struggle desperately to survive: that is their lot in life. There is a middle class of men who make their way in the world by means of art, literature, science or religion, or as academics in a university environment like an extended gentleman’s club. A corresponding class of discontented women floats around, slightly out of focus; their only chance of prosperity is to marry well. Once married, they are safe. Impotent, but safe.

In our reductive hindsight this is a world of caricature. So it appeared to many who lived through it: a society governed by clearlydefined boundaries, where success meant doing exactly what was expected. And women were not expected to attend the ancient universities.

Main image, left: Jane Kirkaldy (middle row, 3rd from right) pictured in 1896 with women scientists from across the University

Women were not expected to attend the ancient universities.

24 Somerville Magazine

Top: A women’s hockey match c.1900

Why would they? Their brains were demonstrably smaller than men’s, implying a corresponding lack of intellectual power.

Women were assumed by the medical elite to have a finite supply of life-force; if this were sent north to the brain, there would be none left to expedite matters further south. As the eminent Dr Henry Maudsley put it in 1874: “It is not that girls have not ambition, nor that they fail generally to run the intellectual race which is set before them, but it is asserted that they do so at a cost to their strength and health which entails lifelong suffering, and even incapacitates them for the adequate performance of the natural functions of their sex.”

He believed in including the excluded, just as we do so passionately today

In other words, thinking withers the womb. It also, incidentally, makes you unmarriageably unattractive: a dried-up bluestocking who wears glasses and a perpetual frown.

Parents considering sending their children to Somerville in the early days thus faced a choice: enjoy the dubious privilege of possessing an educated daughter, or the benefits of grandchildren. You can’t have both. Fortunately for us, the college pioneers were courageous and/or eccentric enough to dismiss these axioms. By pioneers, I mean the founders, the first tutors, their first students and their students’ families.

John Percival

John Percival, for example, served on the committee responsible for founding Somerville Hall. At various stages he was Master of Trinity (Oxford) and Bishop of Hereford: a pillar of the Establishment. But he was also a founder of Clifton High School for Girls in Bristol, and employed the first female member of staff to teach in a boys’ public school. A surprising man, his unorthodox ideas about women’s education might have stymied his career, had he not combined conviction with discretion. He believed in including the excluded, just as we do so passionately today.

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Somerville Principal Emily Penrose at her graduation in 1920 with Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek and President of the Somerville Council, who presented Penrose with her degree in the Sheldonian Theatre

Early Somervillian Emily Penrose was our third Principal. She was in the vanguard when women were first granted degrees at Oxford exactly 100 years ago. Always aware that feminine outspokenness could be taken for stridency, and determination for hysteria, she nonetheless navigated a path – heavily thicketed with prejudice – to academic parity. She did so with gravitas and wisdom.

In 1888, Somervillian scientists Jane Kirkaldy and Catherine Pollard became the first women at Oxford to study Zoology. None had tried before, because the professor in charge was firmly opposed to ‘petticoat pioneers’. But he was on long-term sick-leave when Catherine and Jane niftily applied, and his deputy – something of a feminist – was pleased to admit them. If either had applied alone, she would have had less chance of success, needing an expensive chaperone at lectures and in the labs.

As it was, the two of them could chaperone each other.

There was no guarantee that the professor wouldn’t dismiss them on his return. It was an act of faith on their part – and the deputy’s – to commit money and time to an uncertain future. In the event, they were allowed to stay and in 1891, both achieved a first. Or that’s what they would have got, had they been allowed a degree.

All these women, and their male champions, were heroes. They proved the nay-sayers wrong by opening a non-denominational college for women; funding it (although hand-to-mouth in the early days); staffing it, and studying there. They hoped for the best, cherished their integrity, and were rewarded. Dr Percival prospered in academia and the church; Dame Emily Penrose was the first female academic to be awarded a DCL. Miss Kirkaldy wrote definitive textbooks and passed her love of science to hundreds of students, and Catherine Pollard married, had four sons (so much for Dr Maudsley) and became a lecturer.

All of them were role models for their time – and ours. It must often have seemed that survival for women at Oxford was unlikely at best; at worst, impossible. But because they were patient, optimistic, and yes, bloodyminded when necessary, they not only survived, but flourished. And so will we.

Jane Robinson is author of Bluestockings: the Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education, published

by Penguin. The book is currently in development as a TV drama series.

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She’s Making History: Reflections of a Whitehall Historian Gill Bennett OBE MA FRHistS (1969, History) looks back on a long and eventful career in which she has compiled official histories and provided historical advice to twelve foreign secretaries under six prime ministers – yet her love of the work has never diminished.

I

n March 2020, I had the honour of giving the keynote address at the annual conference of the Naval Servicewomen’s Network in Yeovilton, Somerset. The topic of my talk was ‘An Intelligence Historian in Whitehall’. However, as I stood there in front of 200 servicewomen and several men, mostly of senior rank, drawn from across the Navy, Army, RAF and MoD, two questions lingered at the back of my mind.

First, would this predominantly military audience find any interest in a talk about my work as a historian? And, second, should I perhaps have amended my title to ‘A Female Intelligence Historian in Whitehall’ in order to consider the role, if any, that gender has played in my career?

The serendipity of this role always attracted me: researching whatever comes next.

Happily, the first question was promptly answered by the very generous reception I was given. As to the second question, my instinctive response was that being a woman certainly hasn’t disadvantaged me professionally. In the Civil Service, after all, one is appointed to the job on merit, not gender, and with equal pay. Furthermore, there have been enormous changes across all Whitehall departments since I first joined the FCO in 1972 that have benefitted women and other minorities – not least the requirement to resign upon marrying, which had only just been dropped when I started.

But perhaps to answer this second question fully, I should go back to the beginning and lay the evidence out before my fellow Somervillians

with proper historical care, and let you judge for yourselves.

I joined the FCO Historians as a very junior Research Assistant and worked my way up, but by 1990 was struggling to cope with the demands of both the job and two small children, one of whom was severely disabled.

This led to my moving out of Historians to do three quite different jobs: in the Strategic Planning Unit, helping to draw up the FCO’s first Information Systems Strategy; in Research Analysts; and finally in Personnel, in the Performance Assessment Unit. All these experiences contributed to my success at the Assessment Development Centre (ADC), whereafter I joined the FCO’s Senior Management Structure, ultimately rising to the role of Chief Historian in 1995.

I have spent my career working on history of all kinds. For those not familiar with the FCO Historians, they have two principal tasks: to produce the official documentary history of British foreign policy in the series Documents on British Policy Overseas, and to provide ‘historical advice to ministers and senior officials’ on any given period, nation or topic. This might involve anything from recommending a book to undertaking major research. The serendipity of the job always attracted me: researching whatever comes next. Our role is not to defend government policy, but to explain it. Sometimes that can be uncomfortable, but history is an indispensable backdrop to good policy-making.

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As official historians, we have privileged access to all government archives, open or closed, which at times has entailed working closely with the UK’s intelligence agencies. This is where the ‘Intelligence Historian’ part of my career comes in. Although secret intelligence is only one element in the formulation of government policy, on some issues it can be crucial. Understanding the intelligence context is particularly important when dealing with conspiracy theories. Dealing with these, some of which are remarkably durable and never laid to rest even when all the evidence is made available, has been a constant thread in my career.

Over the years I have been called upon to research, and then publish reports on many such theories, involving such subjects as the Zinoviev Letter of 1924 (a classic case of political disinformation), the Black Diaries of Sir Roger Casement (linked to Irish nationalism) and the death of Polish General Sikorski in 1943 in an air crash (which really was an accident). In this context it has often proved necessary to explain the work of the intelligence agencies – what they do not do, as much as what they do – since the idea that there is a secret web of influence behind policy-making, assisted by covert forces, is one that many people find attractive.

I explain in vain that the very idea of a secret, ‘government-wide conspiracy’ is ridiculous.

When I ‘retired’ (a notional concept some 15 years later), I found myself in demand in a

Gill Bennett with Dame Stella Rimington, former DirectorGeneral of MI5, when both featured as lecturers aboard an espionage-themed cruise in 2014

number of Whitehall departments, including the FCO, in dealing with caches of intelligencerelated material (some of which had been buried for years in the too-difficult-dropit-in-a-deep-hole category). The Cabinet Secretary’s Secret and Personal Archives was one such collection, as well as the records of the FO Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, responsible for liaison with the intelligence agencies.

I have spent many happy, if dusty, hours going through this material, sometimes having to compile files from stray documents, and then preparing as much as possible for review and transfer to The National Archives. The transfer of the first PUSD tranche in 2005 (FO 1093), and the second in 2013, together with the first tranche of the Cabinet Secretary’s papers (CAB 301), are among my proudest achievements.

Two interesting items from the Cabinet Secretary’s archive included here are a handdrawn map showing plans for the protection of Mrs Wallace Simpson in 1936 (I find the

I have spent many happy, if dusty, hours going through caches of intelligence-related material.

SIS Security Plans for Mrs Simpson - Crown Copyright

28 Somerville Magazine

Monthly accounts for the SIS in World War 2 Crown Copyright

Finding documents like these sends a chill up any historian’s spine.

requirement for an ‘old and experienced constable’ particularly amusing) and the hand-written monthly account prepared by the Finance Officer of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the Second World War to secure funds for operations. Finding documents like these sends a chill up any historian’s spine.

otherwise, gaining skills and experience that have been invaluable in my later career.

So, yes, it’s true that I am a woman as well as a historian. But, on reflection, I would suggest that the only differences that has made are positive ones.

In addition, I was fortunate enough to be part of the research team working from 2006 with the late Professor Keith Jeffery, who wrote the official history of SIS, MI6, published in 2010. Today, in 2020, I still work part-time in the FCO, as well as publishing my own books, usually on intelligence-related topics.

With hindsight, I feel very privileged to have had such a long and interesting career. Like many women, I experienced difficulties arising from personal circumstances during my career, but I also received tremendous professional support during those difficulties. And although this may be an old-fashioned view, I believe that adversity can make you stronger and more creative. In this context being a woman led, however indirectly, to my moving into certain jobs that would never have come my way

Gill Bennett’s most recent book The Zinoviev Letter, about a historical case of Russian disinformation and espionage, is now available in paperback.

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Somervillians

Stepping Up

The beginning of the coronavirus crisis was a profoundly challenging moment for us all. It was a time that could have been defined by our separation. But then we started to hear news of the difficult, important and downright inspiring work being done by Somervillians around the world. These stories were a source of strength to us during lockdown, a reminder of the togetherness of our community, so we wanted to take this opportunity to share a few of them with you again.

Graduating early to join the fight

Our final year medical students were expecting a traditional end to their courses with exams, electives and celebrations.

When the pandemic hit the UK in March, those plans were put on hold and many of our medics took the brave decision to graduate early in Miranda Rogers after receiving confirmation of her early order to help their teachers on graduation while on shift the wards. Miranda Rogers (2014, Medicine) and Calum McIntyre (2014, Medicine) were two Somervillians who made the choice to take an active role, with Calum assisting intensive care staff in Reading and Miranda covering the workloads of junior doctors in Oxford’s John Radcliffe Children’s Hospital.

Using innovation in hospital and home

Alumna Maryanna Tavener (1985, Physics) impressed us with her innovation. While working weekends with the Respiratory Team at Winchester Hospital as an FY1, she used borrowed 3D printers to fabricate the necessary parts to convert diagnostic machines into ones to support breathing and help to treat severely ill COVID-19 patients. She did all of this while living in a makeshift annexe in her own home so that she could carry on her hospital work without endangering vulnerable family members.

Angela McLean and Xand Van Tulleken

Guiding the nation

Professor Dame Angela McLean (1979, Maths, Honorary Fellow) and Dr Xand Van Tulleken (1994, Medicine) helped to guide the nation through the pandemic via our TV screens in two very different ways. As Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Dame McLean assisted the government’s response and made a number of appearances at the podium of the government’s daily coronavirus press conferences. Meanwhile, doctor and broadcaster Dr Xand van Tulleken’s clear, rational commentary as presenter of the BBC’s HealthCheck UK helped to bring comfort to thousands of Britons and keep viewers mentally and physically healthy during quarantine. His unorthodox dance moves provided delight to almost as many – perhaps the latter were acquired at one or more Somerville bops?

Educating lockdown Britain

The lockdown had a particularly large impact on schoolchildren.

Dr Jackie Watson (1986, English) and Frank Clarke (2002, English), as, respectively, Vice-Principal and Head of Sixth Form of Oxford Spires Academy and Head of English of Calderstones College in Liverpool worked to provide their pupils with as much learning and normality as possible. With both schools serving a catchment Jackie Watson including areas of substantial deprivation, Frank and Jackie helped to support students more than ever before and find ways for those without access to the internet and computers to learn. Jackie and Oxford Spires also helped to deliver over 120 food parcels a week to the most vulnerable families at the school.

If you would like to read more about Somervillians Stepping Up, you can find further stories on the Somerville website.

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Hold Onto Your Hope, Hold Onto Your Hat What lessons might a Somervillian who lived and worked through the darkest days of World War Two share with us? Julie Summers, author of a new biography of Audrey Withers, joins us to give the question some thought.

O

ver the past few months, I have been asked many times what Audrey Withers’ reaction to the current crisis might have been. Having given the question so much thought, it occurred to me that I might usefully compare these two historic crises,1940 and 2020, with a view to understanding what lessons one of Somerville’s most indomitable alumnae might have for us.

Audrey always put her ability to cope in difficult situations down to the experience of Oxford’s tutorial system.

For those unfamiliar with her life, Audrey Withers (1924, PPE) is most famous for her role as the editor of British Vogue, a position which she held from 1940 to 1960. During her long tenure at the helm of the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine, she had to cope with a world war, the death of a king, the coronation of a new queen, the Festival of Britain, and more tantrums among her star contributors than most theatre directors suffer in a lifetime - plenty of material, in short, for developing the kind of stoicism and resourcefulness of interest to us as we weather our own historic crisis.

But let us remain with Audrey in 1940, not long after the government closed down the country, banned all public gatherings, sporting events and race meetings, shut all theatres and cinemas and forbade meetings of more than 100 people anywhere except church – all of which sounds very familiar to our 2020 ears.

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Let us, perhaps, be even more precise, and place Audrey at the beginning of the Blitz, days after she has been named editor of Vogue, when nightly air raids and daily warnings disrupted life in so many ways.

I find in here a hint of how, in the very early days of the Blitz, much like our own crisis, there had been a touch of panic. However, by early October, when she wrote this article, people had got used to the bombing.

Audrey wrote an article about living under those conditions for American Vogue. She described how every night she and her editorial and art staff packed up a large laundry basket with all their ‘treasures’ in case of an air raid, and every morning the basket was unpacked and work began again. ‘If the siren goes, work goes on until the alarm warns that planes are overhead or that guns are firing, with the result that we now take shelter less frequently but more rapidly.’

“We grab work and paraphernalia, descend six flights of stone stairs to the basement. We look as if we are going on a peculiar picnic: coats slung around our shoulders; attachécases with proofs, photographs, layouts, copy, mixed up with gas-masks, sandwiches and knitting. The Art Department men carry under one arm a stack of drawings and layouts; and under the other, a stirrup pump, a pick axe or a shovel. It’s a peculiar picnic all right.”

Above: Fashion is Indestructible by Cecil Beaton, June 1941 © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. Left: Audrey Withers by Cecil Parkinson, 1944 © Norman Parkinson Archive

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The Board of Trade published nearly 200 notices in one year on the subject of women’s underwear alone.

Audrey working in the bomb cellar of One New Bond Street in October 1940. As usual, she was wearing a hat. | © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd.

Another clear similarity is that during the war, and especially the Blitz, staying positive was vital – and there were many ways in which to maintain one’s morale. In Audrey’s case, it seems her main defence was a combination of scrupulously high standards and the gallows humour that she shared with her fellow Londoners. During long sessions in the bomb cellar, for example, Audrey always maintained impeccable nail varnish and was rarely seen without one of her beloved hats.

As for the humour, Audrey described in the same article how, when she and her colleagues arrived at the office each morning, they habitually greeted each other with ‘What kind of night did you have?’ At which point, each person would share his or her grisly experiences of the night before for the amusement of the others. ‘A feeble joke makes us laugh, and we’re glad of the chance to laugh at anything; and on the other hand, you get oddly insensitive and callous, and are amused by incidents that normally you would have found macabre.’ She concluded the article by saying that they lived day to day, not looking too far ahead but always trying to be organised and practical.

Audrey’s wartime experiences also suggest that heroism is not necessarily essential in coping with this sort of crisis – but that courage, however painfully acquired, is. Audrey was not instinctively brave like her fearless photojournalist, Lee Miller, who worked for her on the ground in Nazi-occupied Europe.

But she became brave through sheer hard work and a determination to keep going under any circumstances – and she was organised.

Left-leaning, highly intellectual and always outspoken, she was not naturally interested in fashion – but she made herself a good judge of it.

Another aspect of her personality was a deep and furious dislike of cheating of any sort. She railed against people who bribed shopkeepers to give them a little bit extra over the ration and she despaired of Vogue readers who cheated with their clothing coupons. I suspect she would have had something to say about panic buying and, worse still, the scalpers who cleaned out supermarket shelves in the early days of lockdown, then offered the products for sale at a higher cost. ‘Spivs’ are what those people were called during the war and Audrey despised them.

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A post-war Vogue spread (June 1957) by William Klein © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd.

Just as we are today, so was Audrey overwhelmed by government advice. During the war it was called propaganda and it was sometimes issued three or four times a day. The Board of Trade published nearly 200 notices in one year on the subject of women’s underwear alone. The ministries of food, agriculture, health and so on were equally busy bombarding editors with information. Audrey had to decide what to publish in Vogue, a monthly magazine, and what could be ignored as it had already been dealt with by the daily press.

person. She has such balance and tact and we all admire her enormously, as being editor just now must be a difficult job.”

By the end of 1940, when London had been bombed for 56 nights consecutively, Audrey could be proud that she had managed to get the October, November and December editions of her magazine out almost on time. November had been two days late and December just one. One of her staff, Audrey Stanley, wrote to Condé Nast describing how they had coped during those difficult months:

Audrey always attributed her ability to cope with difficult situations in her capacity as editor of Vogue down to the experience of Oxford’s tutorial system. She said later: ‘One is out in the open and compelled to draw on one’s powers.

Intellectually, it is the equivalent of a sports training and equally necessary to get good results.’ There is no doubt she drew on that training and the experience of her three years at Somerville when things got tough at Vogue.

“We went through such a transitional stage and we did not know exactly what to strive for, as everything was so precarious, and atmosphere and feeling were as fickle as the wind, but now I really think a comprehensive pattern has come out of it all. Audrey Withers is a remarkable

If we can draw a single lesson from Audrey’s strategy for coping in difficult circumstances, I suggest it would be to keep calm, draw on your inner strength and play fair. And, if you fancy, wear a hat.

As the war progressed, Audrey became more confident in her role as editor and more impressive in the way she coped with the pressure. In 1944 the President of the Board of Trade, Hugh Dalton, described her as the most powerful woman in London. With her editorial style firmly established, Audrey Withers would go on to edit British Vogue until 1960.

Dressed for War: The Story of Vogue editor, Audrey Withers, from the Blitz to the Swinging Sixties by Julie Summers is available now from Simon & Schuster.

Dressed for War has also been optioned by Gaumont for adaptation as a television series.

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A Fever and a Familiar Past:

Where Typhus and COVID-19 Overlap Professor Jo Innes looks back to an 1801 typhus outbreak in the small Bedfordshire village of Langford. She finds there some golden precepts of public health that remain as vital today as they did more than two hundred years ago…

T

he experience of the coronavirus pandemic has, for many of us, been punctuated by the awful novelty of post-lockdown life. Social distancing, hygiene, contact tracing: these measures can seem onerous and confusing. But they have long histories – histories from which we can, perhaps, draw instructive analogies.

With this thought in mind, I recently revisited some material I had collected on a typhus epidemic in the Bedfordshire village of Langford in 1801. I was particularly interested in looking at the methods employed by a local magistrate and doctor to handle the crisis.

Until relatively late in the eighteenth century, ‘fevers’ were accepted as a fact of life, as part of the natural cycle.

Until relatively late in the eighteenth century, ‘fevers’ – not then distinguished into different diseases – were accepted as a natural fact of life. Gradually, however, it came to be thought that institutions where disease flourished, such as prisons and factories, could be organised so as to reduce infections; then that the same approach could be extended into the community. A newly expanded army made a perfect testing ground for novel approaches to reducing disease such as improved hygiene and sanitation, with added impetus provided by the rising frequency of typhus epidemics that accompanied increased industrialisation.

On to Bedfordshire in 1801. That year saw yet another terrible harvest, and, predictably, a fever epidemic. The papers relating to Langford’s experience can be found in the archive of Samuel Whitbread, at the time a major local landowner, a magistrate, and an MP. Whitbread was a fiery radical, sympathetic to the French Revolution, who had even tried to get minimum-wage legislation passed

The Windmill fixed on Newgate Prison to work the ventilators that would, it was hoped, remove diseasebearing vapours

during harvest crises in 1795 and 1801.

He was also a member of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, founded in 1798, whose newsletter encouraged supporters to implement new initiatives in their neighbourhoods – including new approaches to fever.

Hearing that there was fever in Langford, Whitbread stretched his authority to the limit and invoked a 1790 law passed by his

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father (a Tory MP and fellow welfare activist) authorising magistrates to inspect parish workhouses. There, he found a woman (later named as Mary Sack) sick with fever and sleeping on the floor of a room full of noisy young children, lacking clothes or bedding.

He ordered the parish officers not only to overhaul the workhouse, but also to establish a separate, properly equipped place to house the sick, since (he said) unless the fever was vigorously dealt with, many more would succumb – the same principle underlying selfisolation today.

And like today’s governments, he drew on expertise. He told the parish to consult an ambitious young Bedford medical man, Floridaborn Grant David Yeats. Dr Yeats paid many visits to the parish, attending on different patients and issuing general directions. ‘By examination not a little tedious’ he was able to carry out a rudimentary form of contact tracing, pinpointing the origins of the sickness to a local labourer who had been ploughing in a swampy field in August and had fallen sick.

His next-door neighbour, ditching in the same field, fell sick too, as did another neighbour who came to visit the ploughman, from which it spread to her ‘numerous family crowded in one dark small room where they eat and sleep and together cook their victuals’ and then to a neighbour who came to visit her, and to his family, and thence it became general.

Dr Yeats told parish officers to clean houses where there had been fever, and to tell the inhabitants thenceforth to keep them clean and ventilated; he prescribed it as a rule that ‘no stranger … be admitted into any cottage where the fever has prevailed to any degree until the cottage be cleaned.’ Meanwhile, he directed that a barn be converted into a ‘house of recovery’, where the sick could be properly cared for. ‘It required not a little management at first to persuade the patients to come into the house, so much prejudice existed against it,’ but when it was seen that the sick were maintained in comfort and ease, this did away with prejudices and false notions, and smoothed the way for the reception of others.

‘By examination not a little tedious’ he was able to carry out a rudimementary form of contact tracing.

The measures must have been effective. By the beginning of January, ‘the spreading of the contagion [had been] arrested.’

There is much we can relate to here. Yes, coronavirus is not typhus. Yes, understandings, resources and technologies change. And yet look at what endures: a professional commitment to managing the epidemic; a recognition of the need for communication and public trust; and the acceptance that small, simple measures upheld throughout the community can make all the difference.

These are lessons we are learning anew two centuries later. In that there is some comfort – as well as some room, perhaps, for progress.

Below left: Samuel Whitbread II by John Opie Right: A later exercise in analysing disease: Henry Acland’s map of places badly affected by ‘fever’ and cholera in Oxford 1830s-50s.

The site of Somerville wasn’t badly affected, but the area around Observatory Street and Plantation Road was.

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This article is illustrated with artwork created by Somervillians during lockdown. If you would like to submit your writing or artwork to our lockdown archive, please email: communications@some.ox.ac.uk

Cleo After Rain by Eleanor Wood (2003, Human Sciences).

You can see more of Eleanor’s work on Etsy (littleforestartshop)

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For most of us, lockdown has been a time of waiting, alternating moments of hope with boredom, anxiety with consolation. Yet as the days merge together and the weeks pile up, how can we prevent the recollection of these moments from slipping away? The answer, of course, is to share them.

D

oreen Boyce (1953, PPE) is an Honorary Fellow of Somerville and former Provost and Dean of Faculty at Chatham College (1974-1980). An influential campaigner for equal opportunities in the workplace, she was President of the Buhl Foundation (1982-2007) and founded the Executive Women’s Council to provide a source of collective support and influence for professional women.

Having learned that Doreen was writing a diary about her experience of lockdown from her Pennsylvania home, we asked her to share a selection of those entries with us. We asked not only because Doreen is a fascinating person and a beautiful writer, but because it seems important, while we all undergo similar experiences in isolation, to create an archive of these experiences. We would invite you to do the same via the instructions on the left.

THE DIARY OF DOREEN BOYCE Sunday, April 12 (Easter Sunday) Why am I writing? I’ve decided there is a need to capture the thoughts which steal upon us in the lonely moments of crisis. Without this, they evaporate or are dismissed and lost, and the meaning of the menace goes. So history recounts the events and consequences, yet fails to tell the human story. I feel the need to capture those thoughts before they are lost. It is my story of a plague.

I, now at the age of 86, have a pleasant flat in a small community. Until January of this year I was able to pursue as many of my interests as good health, resources and my reliable Buick car allowed: occasional consulting work, travel, family visits and celebrations, service on governing boards and visiting friends. All of these I enjoyed. Some of them made me feel useful; some of them made me feel loved.

All of that has changed. As the COVID-19 pandemic stalked the land with ready contamination, it became clear that my generation was its deadliest prey. And so, we have been confined to quarters. No visitors are allowed. Meals are delivered to our doors.

Communications are by phone and computer. No more feeling useful. No more hugs. When will it end for us? When a vaccine is found or treatments become more effective.

Friday, April 17 I don’t intend to write every day. Too many entries would have to record ‘nothing worth noting today.’

There are days when time drifts by in an unremarkable routine or is consumed by an exceptionally dominating novel. Books can be demanding companions. It is only my beloved poetry books, the King James Bible and the panoramic view from my balcony that bring moments of stillness and wonder.

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Self-Portrait (looking rather bad-tempered) by Diana Havenhand (1986, Classics) Windows below and right by Becky Powell née Fearis (1994, Psychology). You can see more of Becky’s work on Instagram (bristolwench_shooting_stuff)

Tuesday, April 22

It is only my beloved poetry books… and the panoramic view from my balcony that bring moments of stillness and wonder

The consequences of the pandemic are now becoming painfully apparent. The stock market has crashed. Shops are boarded up. All sports and entertainment has been cancelled (the polite word is ‘postponed’). Only essential businesses are allowed to remain open. Billions of dollars of aid have been authorised to help individuals and businesses affected. The mechanisms for distribution of that aid are stumbling. Makes me think nostalgically of the way the rationing system worked so well in Britain in WWII.

Friday, April 24 There is growing pressure to rescue the economy by opening up again, to jump-start the ‘new normal’. The authorities have had the agonising responsibility of weighing the balance between containing the spread of the virus and

rescuing the economy. The ghost of the Great Depression lingers.

Tuesday, April 28 I have made a mask. In order to avoid infecting others we must wear one to cover our mouth and nose. All one’s allure depends on eyebrows!

I have found it to be useful in reminding me that I must not touch my face and that I should be keeping at least 6 feet distant from other people. I do what I can to avoid other people.

I use the stairs instead of the elevators, which incidentally serves as exercise, too, as I am on the 4th floor. I get my mail from the first floor mail box before the dinner hour when I rarely see anyone about. It feels very daring to leave the confines of my flat.

Wednesday, April 29 There is a lot of time in which to think. Thinking is a dangerous occupation and solitude is its incubator. The empty hours can be filled with reading, sudoku, crosswords, etc. Occasionally, when the spirit moves, there are bouts of spring cleaning, sorting clothes, reorganising financial files and family memorabilia. I have twice rehearsed the arrangements for my own death and decided I cannot possibly go under these lockdown conditions!

However, there are times, especially on Sunday, when I confront myself. Oh no, not by looking in the mirror. That is bad enough at my age!

But in a moment of quiet rest and reflection, I find myself in the past with all its imperfections or in the present with a sense of futility and impotence. I was used to feeling in charge, to making my life happen. But now? Happily, these moments don’t last long. I won’t let them.

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Monday, May 11 I keep thinking about the children and young people whose education and career prospects are impacted by all of this. No schools open.

No free meals. No graduations. No study abroad. They have to be a priority, surely. And then there is the mounting unemployment.

The lines for food donations look very reminiscent of the Great Depression.

Monday, May 25 Today is Memorial Day, a day that takes me back to WWII in England and its aftermath. The period of austerity that followed the end of hostilities was for civilians even harder because of increased scarcity of food and fuel. We left for America, a magical land of ice cream and light bulbs. Now we have to overcome a different foe. I have to say from what I see on TV that we do not have that same unity of discipline. There are many who abide by the rules and the guidelines, but there are those who proclaim their refusal to comply and act as they wish in the name of their rights as Americans.

Thursday, June 5 Much has happened since I last wrote. The nation has been in shock, reacting to the death of George Floyd, 46, a black man who was arrested by four policemen in Minneapolis.

He was then handcuffed and lay face down on the ground while a white policeman knelt on his neck. This was caught on camera by a bystander. The world watched him die. The effect of this was to evoke a renewed cry for justice across the nation. Marches were organised and drew massive crowds in major

cities from coast to coast. There are marches now in smaller towns, too, although peaceful ones for the most part.

Above: photographs by Elspeth McPherson (1982, Music)

It brought back for me the march in Johannesburg organised by academics and clergy protesting the banning of black Africans from the universities. This was promulgated under the “Separate Education Act”. I participated in that march: the last legal one in apartheid South Africa. I was angry that my black students at the university disappeared from my classroom. I was driven by the conviction that the way to a better life is through education and that a democracy is only as good as its education. But that is another story.

Thursday June 11, 2020 Today’s Wall Street Journal brings news that three experimental vaccines are going to trials this summer to test safety and effectiveness.

They will involve tens of thousands of subjects around the US. Moderna’s vaccine goes first in July, followed by AstroZeneca and Oxford’s in August and then in September by Johnson and Johnson’s. Although I hope any and all are successful, I have to admit a certain pride in the University of Oxford one!

The vaccine will come. Meanwhile, we stay the course, knowing that if we don’t we will be instruments of contamination and suffering, and possibly death. As each day comes, I count my blessings, which are many. I know that I have a vital role to play, one that Milton understood – ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’

I have made a mask. All one’s allure depends on eyebrows!

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“Circumstances of daily life will change, but Somerville’s ethos will not.”

Elizabeth Kirk Introducing Somerville at Home To help our community stay together during the pandemic, we have launched the ‘Somerville at Home’ series.

Combining online events, podcasts and video messages from prominent Somervillians, last term’s programme featured Alf Dubs and Esther Rantzen, among others.

Somerville at Home will continue in Michaelmas 2020, and we’re delighted to announce that Dame Joan Bakewell will join us as one of our first guests. Before then, you can catch up on previous Somerville At Home events via the QR code below.

“I just listened to Jan Royall’s digital update and wanted to say a big thank you for the ‘Somerville at Home’ series.

It’s so important to feel part of a wider community at times like this.”

Elaine Clements (1977, Jurisprudence) “Thank you so much for setting up the garden tour with Sophie today. My husband and I both felt like we had escaped lockdown and been out and about!”

Kathy Fricker (1969, History) “I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed Jan’s interview with Esther Rantzen. Quote of the interview: ‘Being busy is not the same as living’. Thank you, Esther and Somerville!”

Ruth Rostron (1964, English) “I live in a remote part of the South Island of New Zealand, so this new digital approach is perfect for me!

Many thanks and long may it continue beyond the horrors of COVID-19. Kia kaha.”

Michelle Morss (1997, History)

Somerville College Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HD E: communications@some.ac.uk T: +44 (0) 1865 270600 www.some.ox.ac.uk/alumni

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