Mary Beard's Blog, page 71

The pig: cooked and consumed

Several people have asked for the upshot of the pig story. (And, a warning again, if you are a committed veggie, I would skip the following photos.)

Well I am happy to report that it was successfully cooked and consumed (see above) yesterday, my birthday. And thanks go to especially to my friend Jo who took the lion's share of the cooking, to the daughter who did more than me, to the staff in the kitchen who gave us instructions, and to Andrew and Jo who accommodated the 17 people (more than can fit in my kitchen) to eat the beast ... which, I think we have established, was a "she". And, of course, to Patrick, the donor!

The explanation for my low in-put into the cooking is quite simple. The daughter and I turned up at Sidney (with the stuffing) to prepare the animal for the oven. The trouble was the daughter (official photographer of the occasion) had forgotten her camera battery, so I drove back to get it....took 30 minutes.

By the time I returned, both Jo and daughter had thoroughly acclimatized themselves to the animal. They had washed it, lamented its poor missing/misshapen ear, put their hands inside it, stuffed it and were in the process of sewing it up. I missed out on the "getting to know" stage, and when I saw what was going on I did indeed feel slightly squeamish. Yes, I'm a carnivore, but at 3.30 on New Year's day I wasnt quite ready to have my hand up a dead pig's bum.

So I have to confess that my input was  largely decorative.

As it turned out, the whole process was quite easy.

It took just over three hours to cook, and was almost ready to be out of the over by the time people arrived. Minor hiccoughs later (it wouldn't fit in the dumb waiter, too big), we amply fed the whole company (including two vegetarians).

A memorable birthday party in surroundings that I could not aspire to.... thanks to every who faciltated and came.

And thanks to Dr Thompson, who rounded off the evening with some stunning card tricks. If anyone knows how he can have done it.... picked out of his pack the very card that I had chosen out of mine... please fess up.

 

Guilty until proved innocent

We do not yet know whether Chris Jefferies is guilty of any crime. He has been arrested on suspicion of murder but, as I write, he has not been charged -- as the headmaster of his old school, Clifton College, has rightly stressed. Even if he had been charged, he would be guilty only when a court had found him so. That's the point of the old "innocent until proved guilty" adage.

But if he is innocent, the press coverage of the last day or so will, nonetheless, have more or less ruined his life; and if he is formally charged, heaven knows what it will have done to his chances of a fair trial. Everything about him has become a target for innuendo and prurient speculation and allegations -- from the colour of his hair to his sexuality, politics, teaching methods and alleged voyeurism. We have no idea which, if any, of these claims are true. But two things are certain: first, 99% of us have no good information on which to judge the reliability of what is being published about this man; second, even if they were true, such claims are not evidence of guilt or innocence  (and, if they were, they should in any case wait to be heard in court, not blazoned over the newspapers).

Maybe suspects often get this kind of press treatment; I dont honestly remember. But I have a feeling that this particular coverage has got something to do with the time of year.

This seems to have been a horrible murder; and one's heart goes out to the victim, her family and friends. Yet at the same time, the uncomfortable truth is that news of it has come into our living rooms as if it were a ready made Christmas murder mystery.

In reponse to the drip drip of information released by the police, families across the land have turned themselves into amateur sleuths. I know ours has. What could have happened to the pizza? Was it odd that she bought two bottles of cider, not one? Why not buy anything in Waitrose? And so on.

Anyone arrested under suspicion was bound to provide even more grist to the mill -- to be more fodder for our now roused curiosities. Even the dignified Head of Clifton, who was not even in post when Mr Jefferies was teaching there, seems to have had more than his fair share of hounding (as you can see on the right)

It must have been the worst Christmas imaginable for the family of Jo Yeates; but I cant help reflecting that the holiday season was a pretty bad time to be arrested on suspicion.

. . . . Aah good. I have just noticed before posting this that the Attorney General has also been reading the papers with some concern.

What's wrong with government by petition?

There was huffing and puffing round the breakfast table this morning as we listened to the government's new gimmick -- that successful on-line petitions should get a parliamentary debate, and even made into a bill. The Labour MP (Paul Flynn) had some sensible things to say about the idea... but as the husband pointed out, it's a pity the Labour party hadnt neen more sensible when they started this whole e-petition idea. It was, after all, their gimmick in the first place.

So what IS the matter with the idea?

Well, for a start, it is a veneer of popular power, a substitute touted as the real thing. Mass e-petitioning looks as if it is putting power back into the people's court. But actually it is more likely to give an outlet to the computer-literate, with time on their hands and an axe to grind (which is decidedly skewed sub-category of 'the people'). Remember how the Today programme had to stop it's annual 'person of the year' competition because all kinds of maverick campaigns launched all kinds of very odd people into the top of the list.

Second, it is taking us in the wrong direction in terms of legislative activity. What we need is less legislation, fewer white papers -- not more. That is to say, we need a bit more sense that the solution to every problem is NOT a new law. This e-petition idea risks turning us all into amateur law-makers.

And finally, it turns the complexity of politics into a competition between single issue interest groups (and that in the long term has the effect of taking power away from 'the people' not giving it back). Of course we would all like to save the sparrows and the bees, stop rape, and have a better public transport system . . .  and no doubt you could get 100s of thousands of people to sign up for those causes. But the real politics is not about signing up to some obvious good causes, it's about balancing and prioritising a competing selection of good causes. That's what, for us, the parliamentary process is all about. And anyone who wants to see the fatuity of the petition mode could well study the fruitless Californian system of "propositions" which serve to paralyse more than enhance government.

So far, I guess, so obvious.

But a quick look at the Downing St "petition" site only makes one even gloomier -- if for rather different reasons.

For a start, it's not clear that in practice this government gimmick is offering very much. Unless the site was having a hiccough over Christmas, there appear to be no current, open petitions at all (maybe people are fed up with the Labour gimmick already).

And of the closed petitions, I reckoned that since 2007 only eight got over the magic figure of 100,000 that would give them any parliamentary time. 3 were about fuel and other motoring issues (and I dont think that these were being neglected, even without a petition . . . MPs arent THAT unrepresentative!), 1 was about creating a military hospital, another about having a Remembrance day public holiday and another about letting the Red Arrows fly past at the 2012 Olympics. The other two were asking for the abolition of inheritance tax (128,622 signatures) and the abolition of plans to build a "Mega Mosque" (281,882).

Now some of this amply confirms the arguments I sketched in the first part of this post. I have no idea what campaign was driving the more than half a million signatories who wanted to see the Red Arrows at the Olympics, but as a rather pained government response makes clear, they hadnt been banned from appearing anyway:

"This allegation is not true. The Government has not banned the Red Arrows from the London 2012 Olympic Games. The organising committee of London 2012 will decide what to include in the Opening Ceremony and other celebrations - but with almost five years to go, decisions are yet to be made on what these will look like."

And, as for the inheritance tax lobby, this is exactly the kind of single issue campaigning that gets in the way of joined up financial thinking (so where do they want to find the money that is 'lost' to the public purse?).

But a closer look at the website gives a different slant. The whole thing is so monitored that it is only the 'voice of the people' in a terribly sanitised way.  The most depressing part is the list of 'rejected petitions' -- those that have been deemed off limits, not qualifying for a response. There are more than 38,000 of these -- more than the total of those allowed through the system.

And what have they done wrong? In some cases they have talked about things that people really care about, but are sub judice or outside the Prime Minister's remit (" it is not appropriate to petition the PM regarding legal cases over which he has no jurisdiction"). Or they have written rather too frankly. A whole host get the chop because they "contained language which is offensive, intemperate, or provocative" (well offensive is one thing. . .but are we not allowed to be provocative in a petition?). Others are banned because they contained links to websites (so much for new technology), were funny, or because they "contained party political material" . . .  err isnt this part of the political process?

So much for letting the people have their say. I cant stand this gimmicky idea anyway, but if I DID think that it gave us, the public, some direct influence over the political process, a good look at the website would make me think I's been short-changed.

 

A pig for a present

It is 8.00 in the morning Christmas day, and I havent yet opened my presents which still wait around the tree (above) until the turkey is safely in oven. (There was a minor hiccough last night when a fault in the electronic clock appeared to make it impossible to turn the oven ON... could you grill a turkey in pieces, we started to wonder...? but a bit of fiddling with the buttons sorted the problem.)

But one particular present has already made an impact.

Last Friday the husband texted me in Rome to say that there was a bit of a problem with an unexpected gift which had arrived at college. It was a suckling pig, which would not fit in the freezer.... Vegetarians, please dont read on.

As it happened, if I had known the cold weather would last, it could just have sat in the garden for a week or so, until we cooked it (that was of course another challenge, give the size of our oven, even when working). But being on the safe side, I decided to find it a temporary home in a big freezer....So I made a mercy call to our butchers (the estimable Waller and Son, of Victoria Ave in Cambridge . . .), and they took it in for the weekend.

But where next? College was the obvious answer, so as soon I was back from Italy, I drove to the butcher and took it round to Newnham. The trouble about that was that the catering manager was a generous host to the pig, but the kitchens would be entirely closed between the 23rd and 5th January, and there would be no space for the beast after the 10th. So if I was planning to cook it (how?) over the festive season, it would be inaccessible.

Anyway, one of the advantages of getting older in a town like this is that you get to have friends who are institutionally equipped with big fridges and big ovens. So explaining the problem to my friends Andrew and Jo (Mr and Mrs Sidney Sussex college), it quickly became clear that the Master's Lodge offered a solution to all problems... a big freezer and a big oven, and we all turned out to be free on New Year's Day on which occasion the animal could be cooked and consumed.

So I went and collected it from Newnham and drove the beast to Sidney, where Jo and I received a lesson from the Head Chef on how long to defrost him (her?) for before cooking, and what gas mark was required etc etc. And so we are all set.

And indeed not only has the pig given me a birthday party, but it has made a wide impact around the town. No sooner to I go into college than they ask about its fate, and when I went into the butcher to pick up the turkey, one of the Wallers men said "Andrew's looking forward to eating the pig"... how di he know? Well he turned out to be the acting head porter of Sidney . . . and had been filled in on the fate of the beast from many sides!

So thanks to the semi-anonymous donor (Patrick x x x x x x what a star you are!), and to all who have helped out (especially Jo and Andrew).

On other fronts, Christmas set to go... we even have a little tree in the new bathroom!

And this is our cake...home-made would you believe!

 

The AA to the rescue

I have been a member of the AA (the motoring organisation, that is!) for goodness knows how many years, but have never made much use of it, and never really believed that it would actually help me out in a crisis. It was different in my childhood, when my Dad wore a metal AA badge on his Morris Minor ('traveller version"), and AA men in brown uniform and on motor bikes (a bit like the one in the picture) would salute as we drove past. I really did believe those guys would zoom to the rescue -- but not this new call-centre, business model version of the AA.

Anyway, the son is about to return to the UK (he is miraculously in the air from Cairo as I write) and the little car he drives turned out to be completely dead when I went to see if it would start (it was not just dead, it was apparently beyond resuscitation... the ignition light didnt even come on). The truth was it hadnt been driven for ages, and indeed had for several weeks been blocked in by the builders' skip, so it couldnt have been given a little run around, even if I had wanted to.

So there was no option but to try the AA (and to take advantage of my Complimentary Home Start).

The Call Centre did, I must concede, work fine and I explained the problem, being a little economical with the truth (it hadnt been driven for two weeks, I said .. well, true, but it hadnt actually been started for 6 plus.. and now it was dead as a door nail).

The lady was extremely charming. Yes, they would help -- but I would have to understand that they would be giving priority to roadside breakdowns. It could be 24 hours before they got to me.

She was obviously used to people getting ratty when she imparted this estimate, and was even more charming when I said that I quite understood that there were those who needed their services much more urgently than I did (she didnt know quite how short a leg I had to stand on). I graciously put the phone down, thanking her profusely, and started to negotiate with the husband about how to make sure we weren't out when the AA finally got round to us.

These negotiations were still going on, when the phone rang. It was Richard from the AA, who was 5 minutes away, come to start the car.

Richard arrived, and turned out to be a gratifyingly old-fashioned AA man (had worked for them for 28 years, and seen a change or two..). As I veered towards a slightly franker story, he fixed the battery up to a charger, waited a few minutes, concluded that it wasnt going to be revivable, and it would be best to replace the thing (and he had a new one in the car). All this was done within 20 minutes, while he told me some fascinating stories of life on the breakdown frontline (I didnt know that supermarket diesel didnt have the same strength anti-freeze in it as regular garage diesel, and so froze in these temperatures...)

So in well under an hour I had a drivable car, thanks to the AA and thanks to Richard of Littleport (if anyone from the AA is reading this, pass on my thanks please).

Now it is back down to coping with the remains of the snow. The daughter is due back from Sudan on Christmas Eve, Heathrow permitting, and I still have the wrapping paper to buy.  Meanwhile our ever-ready Human Resources department has issued us with an "Adverse Weather Policy", five pages of it. We are all being urged not to put ourselves to "unnecessary or inordinate risk" in attempting to attend our place of work (phew, that's a relief). Amongst the options presented to me in this capacious document, I think I shall be taking the "working from home" route (having first contacted my line manager, and with all the provisos that my work will be "closely monitored to ensure that it is productive".....if only a line manager could ensure that, I'd like one of those!).

Whatever happened to common sense?

 

 

Tracking down Roman emperors

Being at the American Academy has given my Washington lectures a huge kick start. I've still been spending most of the time in the library, but have been tempted out a few times on the trail of some Roman emperors. Not just ancient ones, I've particulary wanted to track down some of the vast varity of modern ones, and those wonderfully enticing part modern, part ancient ones. You know, those that have some kind of ancient core, but have been refitted, recarved, polished and otherwise titivated into something even better: first century AD by way of Bernini.

So I started Satuday morning with a visit to the Villa Borghese, which must have the most spectacular collection of modern (or partly modern) busts. The marvellous extravagant Augustus at the top (doesnt look like a primus inter pares to me) is seventeenth century, and part of a whole set in the Sala degli Imperatori. And there is another set in the next door room, originally ancient but reset and mounted in the sixteenth century.

After that, I hoofed it to a new display space on the Via del Corso (the site of last week's burning cars and riots) to see a show on eighteenth century classicism at Rome: Cavaceppi terracotta emperors apart, my favourite object, at least for monarchical extravagance, was a classical architecture 'dessert service' designed by Luigi Valdier.

Though I have to say that I'm not sure how it worked or what it was exactly FOR. Dessert service? Is it for the drink or what?

In the afternoon it was Mussolini's turn. Tipped off by some of the young fellows at the Academy, I was off to see the imperial busts in what is known as the Ex-GIL building by that star of 1930s architects Luigi Moretti (he's just had a big retrospective show at the MAXXI here). It was the base of Mussolini's youth organisation -- Gioventù Italiana del littorio -- and is in the process of being renovated into an arts centre, it seems. It's deep in Trastevere, and I probably wouldnt have found it if a couple of friends who are here for a year hadnt agreed to come too (I spent my first 3 months in Rome 30 years ago with this Ian, and it felt fun to be still exploring the city together, decades later. . .).

Anyway the building itself is stupendous (stairwell above). And although the bust of Musso has been  removed, the roundels of his emperors are still there, and a map of Italian conquests (and would be conquests) in Africa.. and a great modernist globe.

 A brilliant find.

Anyway, on other fronts:

The daughter has started a blog, so do click on her and give her a hit and a comment.

And the Pompeii programme got the predictable review from A A Gill. I cant give you a link to it as it is behind the paywall on the Sunday Times, and I dont intend to look at it again to give you some exact quotes. But as I recall it is largely about how awful I look (16 from the back, 60 from the front, with terrible teeth and hair) and how if I was going to thrust myself into the nation's living rooms, I might have made the effort to smarten up (what he doesnt realise is that I had!).

The truth is that if you do thrust yourself into the nation's living rooms, you have to take this kind of stuff on the chin. But, heavens, if I hadn't had some great reviews and ratings already, I could have felt pretty thrashed by this.

I have a golden rule about critical reviews... that you should never write anything that you couldnt say to the victi to their face. So I am looking forward to meeting Mr Gill to put this to the test.

(Contrast Andrew Billen in the Times, who had some remarks on the sartorial side but did it much more efectively with wit not bile....! I really liked the idea that I had been on my way to a disco in the 1970, called by the library and found Gibbon, and never got out...)

The St Peter's experience

As you know, I am in Rome searching out images of Roman emperors -- and the more unlikely places the better (thank you to those who have sent some great suggestions). One of my key targets are the fifteenth-century doors of St Peter's by Filarete, transferred to the new cathedral when Old St Peter's was demolished. Not only are there two scenes featuring Nero (the martyrdoms pf Peter and Paul at the lowest level), and a whole gallery of Roman imperial heads nestling in the floral borde (you can just see one if you click on the image just below).

So after a visit to the Capitoline Museum on Sunday morning (as the husband was here, I allowed myself a trip out of the library), we made our way over to the Vatican.

It must have been a couple of years since I was at St Peter's. And I hadnt caught up with the fact that security screening had been installed. Getting into the cathedral was like getting into an airport, and about as slow. Only two scanners were working and the queue looked about 90 minutes or more long.

Other people were prepared to suffer for their religion, but not us. So we went off and had lunch.

The young men policing the entrance had recommended coming early morning on a weekday. And indeed, on Tuesday at 8.45 am, we walked straight in and the husband, who is a far better photographer than I am, took me loads of pictures. Mission accomplished.

Yet I have to say that the St Peter's experience is not as great as it was. For a start there are barriers inside so you cant walk up to the baldachino. And the piazza itself is full of barriers and plastic chairs (many of them, though you dont see it in my picture, fallen over) and tv screens. This is one of the world's greatest pieces of urban planning for heaven's sake -- doesn't the Vatican think it should keep it looking nice?

But there was a high spot.

Inside the cathedral, some Vatican workmen were assembling what was obviously going to be a large nativity scene. They were, in my terms, getting out the Christmas decorations. There was a rather fancy wooden angel (possibly nineteenth century) and a load of animals in an indeterminate material (I thought plastic, but I now suspect these were wooden too).

The workman had a nice touch of showmanship. As they carried in the animals one by one, that gave an accompaniment of the appropriate noise...baa baaa for the sheep, mooo for the big cow.

And of course they attracted a little crowd (us included) who enjoyed the pantomime. Speaking as a religious historian, there was a message here...these figures were about to become part of a focus of piety, maybe even by the very lads who were doing the baaa-ing and the moo-ing, but they could also be treated in a down to earth and funny way.

 Meanwhile, back to the programme. Thanks so much for all your comments. There were, if you searched around the web, some of exactly the kind of remarks that I was slightly dreading. 'Why did the BBC put Mary Beard on, she has a lousy voice and looks awful, surely there are some sexy clear voiced professors they could use" went one. But that kind of thing was hugely drowned out by the nice things (or by the critiques nicely put, which is just as good). So I've been pleased.

And loads of people watched too.

Pompeii on the television

My Pompeii programme is on BBC 2 on Tuesday at 9.00 pm (except in Scotland, when it is shown on Friday 17th at 9.00). I shall be in Rome, so I won't see it -- though, yes, I have had a preview, and am happy with it. I say what I think, in the way I usually say it; and I look like what I look like, which is above (though, if I am honest, I would say that's a bit too flattering).

So now I shall just have to get a hard skin. Of course, I hope that other people will like it too. But you are not going to please everyone, are you? And they will certainly let it be known.

And, fair enough, I suppose -- if you put yourself about on the television, then you have to be prepared for people to take potshots. That's the deal I guess.

I noticed the way that some critics went for Richard Miles (who used to be my colleague in Cambridge)... for his scarf and for the way he looked down his nose in front of the camera. Maybe he did, and maybe it was bad telly -- I just thought it was Richard.

So I am fully expecting, indeed preparing myself for, the stuff about my messy hair and wrinkles... fair cop, but that's me. And I shall take it like a woman.

I had a tiny prequel last week, after there was a nice feature in the Independent about the programme by John Walsh, whom I have met, but who is not a brown-nosing friend... indeed the last time I encountered him was over a year ago at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, in a historic Booker debate (he was championing Portnoy's Complaint, me The French Lieutenant Woman.. and we rather locked horns over their relative merits).

Anyway almost instantly there were a couple of comments posted under the article.. one saying "Who IS Mary Beard" (fair enough).. the other suggesting that it was all a hype to sell more of my books for Christmas. That's where I found myself bridling... hell, I filmed this programme in the Spring, I thought, I had no idea when it would be shown. In fact, I was impatient to have it on air, and I had always hoped it would be early in the autumn. Of course, I'm pleased to sell more books, but it was nothing to do with me that the programme was put on in the run up to Christmas. (I should say BBC scheduling remains even more mysterious to me, after making this programme, than it did before).

Still, I expect that is nothing compared with what will come.

My position (let me remind myself) is this. I did this programme because I was asked... because I want to get more people interested in the Roman world (and even if it is a ratings disaster, it will sure reach more people that a book). And because, after all those things I have said about the BBC not being interested in women over 50, it would have been cowardly and hypocritical not to give it a try. I enjoyed doing it and learned a lot -- and think that we made a good programme.

If I turn out to have been hopeless at it, at least I've got the day job!

(Oh .. and you kids from Hull Collegiate, I dont know if you make it into the background, but I especially hope that YOU enjoy it!)

 

The American Academy in Rome

When in Rome, I usually stay at the British School in Rome -- a wonderful institution. Please bear in mind, when you decide to knock this idea of "academies abroad", that British Academies are part of a much wider movement -- almost every European country has a foothold in Rome or Athens. There is a Dutch, a Belgian, a French, a German Academy here, and many others. And they do great jobs in working on the whole history of Europe.

Anyway, not this time. Currently, I have a short term placement at the American Academy (on the Janiculan, if you know the place; pictured above). I am here to prepare my lectures for Washington DC in the spring -- when I shall be talking about the '12 Caesars'. My line is going to be that the tradition of representing Roman emperors is worth thinking about beyond the ancient world itself. I am going to be exploring ancient images of emperors (any views on this, please comment) and later ones from the Renaissance, and later.

So I am in the library finding out about how the emperor was portrayed in a range of different locations and times. 

At the same time, I am having a great time in Rome despite hardly having stepped over the threshold of the American Academy. Two good things: first the library (goes without saying); second the food. After what is euphemistically called a fallow period a few years ago, the Academy invested in a "sustainable food" programme. Sod the sustainability, it tastes good. So I am having a 12 hour day in the library, and then tucking in to a great dinner. (The puritans would probably say that I was over provided for.. but, if you want good research, you need decent food.)

Meanwhile, I am listening, from Rome, to gloomy news from the UK. There is not a shadow of doubt that the coalition programme for universities is wrong. What happened in the demonstrations, I dont know (though I suspect that some of my colleagues are in danger of reliving their days of 1960/70s protest... and are really enjoying having an enemy at last). But listening to Andy Burnham on Any Questions this evening makes me realise that you certainly cant trust the Labour party on this, any more than the rest.

So where are we?

Can black kids get into Cambridge?

I confess, I have escaped to Rome (to the American Academy, on which more later). The idea was to do some of the research which is my job. The truth is that I have spent most of the last 24 hours answering emails and writing references.

Since I left Cambridge, the students has ended their occupation (well done, one and all for keeping our eyes on what will happen to arts and humanities if the con-dem proposals have their way). And then the Guardian had an exposé of how few black students get into Oxbridge.

Can I stick up for us, again. There can be no sensible person who thinks that it is ok that 21 Oxbridge colleges took no black student last year. But before we go down the "Oxbridge snobs arent interested in most of the ordinary kids of this country" route, can we stop to think. Oxbridge bashing is often a convenient alibi for not reflecting on what the bigger problem is... it's easier to dump on racist Oxbridge dons that to fix some of the big things that might be the matter with state education.

Let me put a few points:

1) The figures quoted by the Guardian were about black students; not about ethnic 'minorities' overall ... Asian, Middle Eastern etc. It is true that the number of black Afro-Caribbean students at Cambridge is woefully low, but that is not the case with other ethnic 'minorities'. Obviously it varies from subject to subject, but it is simply not true that Cambridge is a middle class white place. My college (Newnham) came out badly in the number of black students it took, measured by proportion of applicants to places .. but I defy anyone to come and say that it 'feels' white.

2) The figures are always more complicated than they seem. There is no single variable when it comes to 'getting in' (however much it suits journalists to pretend that there is) -- you need to factor race against class and school/educational background etc before you get a start at understanding what is going on. On this scoring Kwasi Kwarteng (black Etonian, ex-Trinity) counts for ethnic diversity (true, but not exactly what most of us mean by 'access').

3) There are other ways in which you need to break the figures down. As the Guardian article was honest enough to point out, more than 29000 white students got three As or better at A level; fewer than 500 black students did (though nearly 50% of those applied to Oxbridge, whereas fewer than 30% of the white students did). There is also a subject bias -- in that black students disproportionately appled for the most competitive subjects. (Though that is tricky again, the fact that there are fewer applicants per place for Classics than for most other subjects does not mean that it is a back door route to Oxbridge for the privileged.. despite the sounding off of Michael White).

4) I have to say That I haven't seen racisim in Cambridge admissions, far from it. I know that the answer to that is that institutional racism is invisble, so of course I wouldnt have noticed it. But the fact is that we DO get training in interviewing, so that we dont just wreak our prejudices. And the university has a great campaign (GEEMA) for encouraging minority applicants. A lot of people put a lot of time into this. Simplistic conclusions of the "Oxbridge is racist " variety only make their job more difficult.

And I dont think that it is true.