Category: Perspective

By Chloe Stiens

The Last Dinner Party, in the months leading up to the release of their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, seemingly appeared from nowhere. Their hit song, Nothing Matters, suddenly reached 16th on the UK singles charts, while videos from their gigs proliferated on Tiktok. In consequence, everyone from Tiktok reviewers to respected music critics have attempted to account for their rapid rise to success, looking everywhere but at the music itself.

Like breakout act Wet Leg (also fronted by women) they have been labelled ‘industry plants’ by internet critics, an allegation that mainstream news outlets have done little to disprove. Critics have pointed to how The Last Dinner Party got a major record deal (Island Records) before releasing a song as evidence. This is true; the band did not release music independently to be scouted by an A&R representative trawling Spotify playlists or trending Tiktok sounds. Rather, they performed. The band, made up of Abigail Morris (lead vocals), Lizzie Mayland (guitar, vocals), Emily Roberts (lead guitar, mandolin, flute), Georgia Davies (bass), and Aurora Nischevi (keyboards, vocals), refined their sound and image by performing throughout 2022, so that by the time they entered the studio, they were, in effect, fully formed and clear in their artistic intention. This contrasts to the almost-overnight success of other Gen Z stars like Pink Pantheress, who went viral on tiktok making music at home. That is not to say that Pink Pantheress does not deserve her success; however, The Last Dinner Party’s success is not only down to their talent and good luck, but also their hard work.

That is not to say that the band is not lucky. Morris’ parents sent her to Bedales, a private school. Although Morris undoubtedly benefited from this education and the in-school musical opportunities it afforded her, its relevance on her musical output ends there. We cannot allow her musical talent to be entirely attributed to privilege, as if her academic education somehow gave her the unique voice and the commanding stage-presence she is known for. Certain reviewers have used Prelude to Ecstasy’s sonic grandeur as evidence of an inescapable privilege, suggesting that the album-opener ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ conjures up Saltburn-esque images of wealth and decadence, aligning the band with the over-privileged Catton family while ignoring what the band have actually cited as their intention and influences. The Last Dinner Party have said that they wanted to create something ‘gothic and romantic’ (Rolling Stone). They are a Gen Z band; they aimed for a decadent ‘aesthetic’ as suggested by their name, one informed by the 19th-century literature both Morris and Davies study at university, or at least by the 21st Century impression of it. This baroque fantasy is evident in their lyrics, costumes, and the maximalist and classically-influenced production of the album. Perhaps Emerald Fennel wanted to recreate a similar ‘aesthetic’. However, the implication that Morris’ private school education is responsible for the creative direction of Prelude to Ecstasy is unfair. That said, I acknowledge that perhaps critics are more concerned about the success and number of privately-educated musicians in comparison to their state-educated counterparts. But the answer is not to damn any musician who was lucky enough to benefit from a musical education, but rather to defend music education from further cuts. In 2022, 179 independent schools enrolled students for A-level music, compared to just 69 secondary comprehensives (classical-music.uk), while children from well-off families are more likely to benefit from private instrumental lessons. Thus, the underfunding of the arts is creating a two-tier society in which music is only available to children whose parents can afford it. If we want the ratio of privately-educated to state-educated musicians to balance out, we must do more to make sure all children have the same musical opportunities.

However, there is more than a hint of sexism in the consistent attention paid to Morris’ upbringing and in the attribution of the ‘industry plant’ label, both of which imply that The Last Dinner Party’s success is due to factors other than the quality of their music. Their male counterparts are not undermined in this way; take, for example, King Krule, who attended the BRIT school. The BRIT school is a state school, but students there benefit from the industry connections that are so essential to getting your music heard. Or, Bakar, who attended a boarding school in Surrey. Neither of these London Indie stars have had their schools placed before their talent in terms of their success. Moreover, critics point to class-based privilege in music while ignoring the difficulty of being a woman or non-binary person in rock. Mayland, Roberts, and Davies, (guitar and bass guitar) have all become rock guitarists in a world that, when they were children, almost completely aimed the instrument at men. In the early 2000s, girls were pushed towards other, usually classical, instruments by the complete lack of non-male rock guitarists in the media. Even Roberts initially started learning classical guitar, which she did not take to (she credits her later ‘acoustic’ guitar teacher as ‘the reason I’m still playing guitar’) (guitar.com). Not much seems to have changed; St. Vincent (Annie Clark), ranked 26th by Rolling Stone in their list of ‘250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time’, is still not a household name. If girls do play guitar, they are often pushed into the solo ‘singer-songwriter’ bracket as opposed to lead guitarist. To have a band in which neither the lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, nor bassist is a man is extremely rare. Rarer still, to be taken seriously as a rock band without a male member, and as band singing about feminist themes when 43% of the British public (and 52% of Gen Z) say ‘we have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men’ (Kings College London). If critics are going to point out class-based privilege, it is only fair to also draw attention gender-based discrimination too.

So, instead of dismissing The Last Dinner Party as privileged industry plants, let’s pay attention to their music. If we want to uncover what has made them who they are, let’s look to Nischevi and Roberts’ musical backgrounds of classical and jazz, and Morris’ and Davies’ literary inspiration. They cite Kate Bush, Queen, Florence and the Machine, and David Bowie as influences. They met at university in London, and became friends attending gig at the celebrated venue ‘the Windmill’ in Brixton. They are extremely talented, clear in their vision, and have worked hard to produce an album so good that their critics are forced to fling labels at them instead of finding fault with the music itself.

Image Credit: DORK

By Cosmo Adair

To idealise: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart. (Martin Amis)

There’s a mobile-game called New Star Soccer in which you’re a ludicrously gifted footballer – the sort for whom ninety goals-a-season constitutes a meagre return. As well as the more obvious gameplay (football), you encounter a sequence of in-game choices. Should you cheat on your girlfriend? Or go to the casino with your teammates? Or buy a sports car? You face all the no-win quandaries of a thick and morally bereft noughties footballer. 

Tough as being an adulterous spendthrift with a celestial right foot might be, it’s light work compared to dealing with the press. For post match interviews, several boxes appear on the screen, containing trivial if absurdly meaningless quotes. The boxes flash quickly in a sequence. In spite of how sheerly unmemorable the phrases are, you have to remember the order before tapping it into the phone. It comes out with, say, ‘Over the moon, y’know, great feet for the big lad, um, game of two halves,’ after which the press will be delighted. But if you mix up ‘y’know’ and ‘um’, for instance, then the Fourth Estate will come for your head. It’s deliberately comic, whilst not unrepresentative of most football-speak, the language in which a person with as quick and sybaritic a lifestyle as Kyle Walker comes across as impossibly dull. Not all the dullness is in the tone; in fact, most of it’s in the language. Football-speak is cliché, whether that’s the monotone reflections of the above, or else the cringe-makingly brilliant commentarial flights of Peter Drury which, for all their purported originality, still brim with cliché. Football-speak is inseparable from cliché. I think that is why we are so fond of it. 

I had planned to write this in the snottier voice of one who abhors the debased language with which the mobs discuss their footy-ball. But after the most basic preliminary research, I encountered that ‘Football Clichés’ are a well-trodden topic of discussion. There is a book, a blog, a podcast, and even an article in The Guardian—all by the same man, Adam Hurrey, a writer at The Athletic. 

In his book Football Clichés, Hurrey finds them endearing. They have ‘unhelpfully negative connotations,’ given ‘[they imply] a lack of original thought, of stifling stereotype.’ He acknowledges that football-speak can be guilty of this at times. But, ‘For 150 years, it’s been somebody’s job to relay what happens within the ninety minutes of a match and, as that coverage now reaches saturation points, a reliable formula for succinct description of the sport has become vital.’ So, they become a cipher through which fans, players, managers and commentators can speak. According to Hurrey’s helpful definitions, ‘The ball is in the net’ means it’s ‘Not strictly a miss, but if ‘the ball is in the net’ there’s a fair chance the goal has, in fact, been disallowed.’ Or else, a ‘Host of opportunities’: ‘Hosts tend to be fairly undesirable collections of missed opportunities or absentees from the first team.’ Hackneyed phrases are instead condensed, efficacious means of communication.

But Martin Amis makes the opposite point. More generally, clichés are ‘dead words’; they lack ‘freshness, energy and reverberation of voice.’ A cliché undermines our capacity for sincere thought and feeling. This is true. If you doubt me, you need only call to mind ‘Take Back Control,’ ‘Get Brexit Done,’ or ‘Make America Great Again,’ which testify to the hypnotic effects of sterile language. Those phrases attest to how, in losing freshness, cliché becomes ‘herd writing, herd thinking and herd feeling’. Hurrey says something similar; only, he gives it a positive spin. In football, clichés act as a ‘leveller—enabling conversation between those relative novices who believe the problem with Arsenal is that they try and walk the ball in and those who feel it’s a little more complicated than that.’ In a sense, then, it’s a kind of esperanto—a simplistic, classless language with which the herd can low.

If you’re unsure of how to use ‘the herd instinct’ in a sentence, the Cambridge Dictionary gives the example of ‘In large crowds, such as at a football match, the herd instinct often kicks in.’ Cliché is the language of the herd and, for better or for worse, football is a herd sport (playing it, watching it, talking about it). The worst moments of following football are bound up with the herd (mid-morning drunkenness, beating-up the French or anyone for that matter), but so too are the positive ones. In the subjugation of self to the crowd, in the Dionysian loss of identity, you become a part of an intoxicatingly cohesive, classless whole, which doesn’t care who you are but rather who you support. 

Reviewing a book on Hooliganism in the 80s, Amis described how its author ‘wrote the book because he liked it, too. He liked the crowd, and the power, and the loss of self.’ To succumb to a crowd, you must shed the uniqueness of your language and your personality, which cliché enables you to do. So, whilst clichés are no less crass when they’re referring to football, they’re somehow less immediately negative. The herd, in football, is more ambivalent—neither good nor bad. Cliché is the same. To idealise: football is cliché. 

By Ida Bridgeman

I saw the first signs of spring one week, snow drops had opened. In the quiet of the early morning, glowing sky, and the river running strong with February rain, I walked past them on the banks – had they opened earlier? Had I not noticed? Some glimmer of hope and joy sparked inside of me, not that I wasn’t joyous before I saw them, but in that way your heart skips when you notice some small details of the beauty of the world. A Moldovan legend recalls a battle between Lady Spring and Winter Witch; Lady Spring pricked her finger and the snow beneath it melted and created a gentle snowdrop flower. This announced her reign over the world. People don’t plant snow drops in the way a rose garden is cultivated and shown off for the brightest colours, this is an unexpected and unprepared beauty. There are, of course, other flowers that bloom in winter but these are sturdy, and shrub like and dull the senses as we huddle down the path turning our face from wind and rain. These white drops form out of the scruff of a woodland floor and on road sides, they placed themselves into my sight at exactly the time they felt like it, prompted by some unknown feeling in the air that it was time for an introduction to spring.   

 It’s easy not to notice something has been absent until it appears again, a year after they were last here, so quiet and delicate aside the rushing of the river. The symbolism is blatant – new beginnings, hope, rebirth, perhaps the intricacy of creation and the delicacy of life. Plants have all sorts of funny meanings. Rosemary is for remembrance, buttercups can read your likes and dislikes and OH, the roses on Valentines. When did flowers become a symbol of love? Is it depressing that they die or a reminder of the fleeting nature of the everyday and the necessity to take in the colours and the scent whilst they are there? As for love, we look back to Greek mythology where the Goddess Aphrodite’s beauty was so great that red roses sprang up wherever she walked and became a symbol of love and desire, given in romantic gestures. 14 February involves less Greek Goddesses and more hopeful gents, on every turn of a Durham street, bouquet in hand ready to profess their admiration to their current sweetheart – same one as last year? Does it matter? Sorry, I’m not a sceptic of the validity of valentine’s love, I am merely pointing out the inevitability that each year, whilst the snow drops appearance is joyously unpredictable, the market square Tesco’s flower delivery on 13^th Feb is reassuringly inevitable. Much like Xanthe’s ‘three different types of cookie dough spread’ found on one shelf before pancake day. (‘A MODERN DAY LENT’, published Feb 22)  

There’s this desire in our human psyche to know, name and order everything. When I was young, my mother spent much of her gardening time returning to the house to quiz us on the colourful, sneeze inducing (ironic that a love of flowers is accompanied by hay fever) blossoms and buds. When we went away to school and university this game moved online until my brother discovered the ‘Picture This’ plant identifier app and the integrity of the quiz was at a loss. We were then expected to insert the appropriate ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ and ‘how lovely’ at pictures of colourful plants. I hope we can still appreciate them as much without knowing the Latin conjugations of a tulip.  

 I’ve spent summers days happiest filling my hair with flowers and sliding one through a button hole of anyone around me that will stay still for a patient second, whilst Van Gogh painted his Irises in the Saint- Rémy psychiatric hospital as an outlet, his way to avoid going mad. I think what gets me about February’s first snow drops is their delicacy. In most folk narratives their appearance has strong notions of death, the white petals like a corpse’s shroud, their drooping head sombre. They grow close to the ground, where the dead sleep, and they thrive in quite graveyards. Yet in the story of Persephone, the goddess of both underworld and of vegetation, she carries snowdrops to earth when she is allowed from Hades in spring. The flowers may have an appearance that nods towards death, but they bring the first signs of life to a wintry earth, a spark of warmth and excitement, a feeling somewhat like love itself, on that February morning.

By the time I am publishing this, however, time has moved on, as it so inevitably does in this fleeting space; no matter what moment, or which season you prefer, none can last long. The snow drops are passing, the door has been opened for the bluebells and daffodils, the real flowers of spring that grace Easter time in their bright yellow glory. That small moment of joy at Persephone’s bringing of spring has dissipated now, overtaken by other beauties in the world. I am sure I shall find the first snow drops in some other place, at another time next year, I hope.

By Xanthe de Wesselow

Expanding from its roots in ancient Pagan rituals, Lent has evolved into a sacred period within the Christian tradition. Manifesting itself as a 40 day period, it now serves as an engagement in special spiritual preparation of prayer, penance and abstinence in anticipation of Easter. Although modern interpretations are often associated with restrictive trends and fad dieting, such as the removal of any form of refined sugar (otherwise known as joy) from our lives, the Lenten season was traditionally a more rigorous religious observance characterised by a strict fast, broken only with a simple meal devoid of meat, eggs, dairy, and alcohol after sunset, accompanied by deep introspection and prayer.

Historically, it was therefore a necessary custom to deplete all existing supplies of rich, fatty products such as butter, milk, sugar, and eggs the day prior to Lent, hence Shrove Tuesday’s worldwide nickname ‘Pancake Day’. Ash Wednesday then arrives after sufficient ‘shriving’, or presenting oneself to a priest for confession, marking a significant tradition in preparation for the Lenten season. However, in today’s money, Shrove Tuesday has been overshadowed by commercial interests, as supermarkets and societal pressures now lead us to believe it should be a profitable day of excessive spending and materialistic home decorations that can be religiously documented on social media. The once meaningful observance has transformed into a commercialised phenomenon, where the true essence of the tradition, such as the allegories behind each ingredient, is often lost amidst the consumerism.

The irony reaches new heights as your local Tesco will fool you into stocking up on three different types of cookie-based spread one day, only to be bombarded by endorsements from a plethora of wellness influencers and Instagram gut health gurus the next, promoting kimchi and kombucha as essential Lenten ‘healthy habits’. Paradoxically, lest us forget the Easter eggs that have dominated the shelves since as early as January 2^nd, blurring the lines between seasonal observances and consumerist indulgence. It’s no wonder any form of New Year’s Resolution crumbles by the time Blue Monday arrives, yet another marketing ploy to capitalise on the wellness industry (but have you tried meditation?). Such is the absurdity of our commercialised culture, where tradition and spirituality often take a backseat to profit-driven agendas.

Lent, in its contemporary guise, appears like a slap in the face and a mocking reminder following as if to say, ‘your will power didn’t last very long then… fancy another go?’. This time, however, we are taunted by the tiny glimpse of promised bait dangling 39 days away, symbolised by mini-egg-infused delicacies and gold foil-wrapped bunnies. There is no denying it is bizarre. How, in two thousand years, has society transformed a period of quiet reflection into a trendy, competitive game of social media one-upmanship; a strategic rivalry of who’s giving up what? Even better if you are taking up something and actually sticking to it. I mean who does that?

So, in our body image, diet obsessed culture, we have come to see Lent as a period perfect for purging ourselves of something we think we can’t live without for just long enough. Then, when we’ve counted down the days and proved our virtuosity and self-will, we can reason with our inner voice to return to our pre-Lent addictions and maybe even binge them. The chocolate bars, coffee, alcohol, scroll holes and internet shopping can return once more, and even better, we feel justified to do it all in abundance because ‘you deserve it, you’ve abstained the whole of Lent!’. First, of course, there’s the chance to baske in the glory of virtual applause, as your Lenten sacrifice repeatedly merits itself under meticulously curated hashtags. It’s a vicious cycle of self-deprivation followed by indulgence, all punctuated by the invisible reward of a distant validation, a far cry from the 40 days Lent was intended to be. Nothing says spiritual enlightenment nor religious observance like an Instagram diary of temporary abstinence…

In our digital age, it has become increasingly fashionable to not only give up something for the Lenten season but also to take up new practices, many of which feed into the continually booming health and wellness industry. From committing to ‘40 sea swims’ or ‘40 days of yoga’, these endeavours are extensions to the popular New Year’s Resolutions that saturate social media each January. Whether we find ourselves embracing ice baths or daily stretching routines, we unwittingly become swept up in the Lenten frenzy, as it seems the most important aspect of these trends is to tell everyone you’re doing it (otherwise what’s the point?). Ultimately, the essence of Lent has been overshadowed by the need to showcase any such endeavour. Our younger selves might have often joked about giving up Lent for Lent. Now, I think we need to give up talking and digitally broadcasting about Lent. Perhaps then, the season would be one of growth and reflection should we want to participate, rather than a form of superficial self-validation.

Are we missing the point altogether? The Christian Church offers us almsgiving, prayer and fasting as the three pillars to focus on during Lent. In layman’s terms, we’re advised to give charity, thanks and abstain from food and drink for the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan. Yet, here we are in 2024 taking a more self-absorbed approach than ever. We’ve moved so far away from personal reflection and spiritual growth that Lent is now more a spectacle of performative piety. Forget the sacrificial chocolate bar or glass of wine, it seems the public declarations and digital validation are what has become of this annual Christian practice.

By Cosmo Adair

James Marriott is a columnist and podcast reviewer for The Times.

The interview began with the ping of a notification: James Marriott has joined your meeting. Zooming, as we were, I can only write a head-and-shoulders portrait of James, framed by the glistening shelves of the Times’s bookroom. He wore a salmon pink shirt and a pair of large wide-framed glasses, which donnishly slipped down his nose as his conversation grew more energetic. His hair was half-messy, fine, placing him somewhere between the respectable columnist and the abstracted poet. But how to render someone’s physical presence when you’re interviewing them online? So, as I watched the recording and copied out the transcript, I scribbled brief, italicised stage-directions: As I ask this, he leans forward, rubs his eyes to tease out a thought, and then jolts up and bursts into enthusiastic speech. That captures all the reader needs to know: the charming, if unexpected, engagement and enthusiasm of a renowned writer speaking to a provincial, student magazine. 

Marriott grew up just outside of Newcastle, where ‘I really didn’t want to grow up … It felt like I should have been born down south, and that it had been a cosmic mistake that landed me there.’ He spent his time reading voraciously (‘novels, poetry, all that kind of stuff,’ including ‘a lot of Dickens novels’ and ‘a lot of Iris Murdoch’) and listening to formative rants from his Nihilist father, who spoke ‘about how human beings are all just collections of atoms and that we live in this materialist universe where love was just a chemical … That’s not, you know, the most optimistic way to be brought up.’ And so he passed his schooldays, pacing about the playground as he recited Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” (‘I was, unfortunately, pretentious’), and dreamed of moving south for university—his sights set firmly on Oxford, and having watched the Granada adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, ‘I’d convinced myself it was going to be, you know, befriending aristocrats and discussing poetry over port and driving around in vintage cars.’ On arrival, however, he was ‘hideously disappointed that people were normal’—in spite of which, he was resolute in enjoying it since if he didn’t ‘it would have destroyed the entire purpose of my teenage years.’ 

After Oxford, he hoped to ingratiate himself with Literary London since ‘at the time, it seemed like the most glamorous thing to write a book review for a national publication.’ But this took time. For three years, he worked in an antiquarian bookshop where he would ‘[sit] in monkish silence,’ cataloguing books.  During this period, he sent out poems and article proposals to newspapers and magazines until The Times took him on. Still there, he is a columnist, podcast reviewer, occasional feature writer, and a regular guest on Times Radio’s flagship podcast, Matt Chorley’s “Politics Without The Boring Bits.” His interview with Calvin Robinson (‘So you wouldn’t say that Enoch Powell was a racist, I ask, my incredulity doubtless signalling to him that I am a woke liberal of the most mindlessly ovine disposition’) and his feature “How I fell in love with Serge Gainsbourg (‘To anybody who has ever regretted being born on the pallid and puritanical side of the Channel, he offers an exotic vision of what might have been: semi-permanent drunkenness, a bohemian contempt for all shirt buttons above the navel, a career of chaotic offence-giving rewarded with public adulation’) cry out expectantly for an anthology of his writings. 

I’ve often found that what makes his columns distinctive is his tone. He has an excellent grasp of the ‘contemporary moment,’ all the while seeming rather uncharmed by it. He’s ‘a bit of a technophobe … sceptical that TikTok is particularly good for anybody and for people’s intellectual lives,’ and he worries about the ‘dumbing down of culture and people, and being passively accepted.’ Therefore, his columns can seem pessimistic—but isn’t that just the age? ‘The cultural atmosphere is pretty gloomy, and I know people have always thought this, but when you think Trump in America, the Environment, AI, massive tech companies, Biden losing his marbles, the Housing Crisis—it’s kind of reasonable to be gloomy.’ 

Fitzgerald once wrote that ‘the test of a first-rate intelligence … [is to] be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.’ I think that Marriott passes this test. He might not match the intensity of Fitzgerald’s clash of embittered cynicism and wilful optimism, but he shows a persistent attention to both sides of an argument: ‘I think that whatever you’re writing, you can accept that for any opinion which can be expressed in the space of a thousand words, there’s an opposite opinion that’s equally true and can also be expressed in a thousand words.’ 

Talking about AI, he shows this: ‘My original take was that I think the crucial thing will be that people do care about the fact that something comes from another human being. We have these strong intuitions about art and literature coming from human beings, and the whole point of art is to connect us with human beings.’ His interview with John Gray—whom Marriott paraphrases as arguing ‘disaster looms, AI’s going to replace everyone’s jobs, we’re all screwed’—led him to a more despairing position. That was eased by a conversation with someone who had read his article who said that ‘there’s this kind of mindless optimism about what the technology’s capable of.’ Now, he thinks that ‘we shouldn’t extrapolate infinite potential from something that can just write plausible sentences.’ 

Despite his concerns ‘about how natural text will be to people’s experience in the future,’ he remains a passionate advocate of literature and the literary. Last year, he found himself in the somewhat absurd position of being criticised by The Bookseller for arguing that some books are better than others. ‘The thing is, I find it really hard to believe that many people do actually believe that all books are the same. I think that’s also just not true either.’ This leads to the “Culture Wars” and the recent tendency to value a literary work according to its political message as opposed to its aesthetic triumphs. But this isn’t new: ‘In the 30s there was an awful lot of incredibly pious and tedious stuff written about, like, the importance of the voices of the workers and the voices of the working class … and it’s really fascinating, as well, if you go back to 19th century Russia, there was so much stuff about, was Turgenev a Liberal, or what exactly was he? Was such-and-such a Socialist? … I guess the kind of unifying theme of those moments is that those are societies which were undergoing dramatic social and political change.’ In any case, the freedom of expression—whatever the climate—is one of his most deeply held values: ‘I think that whether or not you’re on Salman Rushdie’s side is historically a pretty good test of whether you’re a serious person or not.’ 

But the anxiety and self-criticism of a “Culture War” can benefit a society. ‘It is easily forgotten that the intellectual history of the West is much more turbulent than we remember,’ and that the narratives we often study of a ‘West [that] has been unruffled and triumphalist in its progress’ simply isn’t true. He discusses Isaiah Berlin’s “Three Critics of the Enlightenment,” a book which discusses Giambattista Vico, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Johann Georg Hamann, all of whom cast doubt on the Enlightenment’s relentless progressive march. ‘From the very beginning, [they were] furious and righteous critics of all the Enlighten—, of the self-confidence of the Enlightenment, about Western Civilisation, the superiority of Western Civilisation and I think it’s—I mean, Herder, especially, can at times sound like he’s writing now [and] tweeting. [Herder says] how it’s ridiculous to think that Western Civilisation is superior to any other civilisations [since] all civilisations are fitted to this particular people and this particular place.’ Therefore, ‘doubt and self-criticism have always been in our culture.’ And whilst it’s ‘really annoying to live through it when it erupts as viciously as it does now … Perhaps it’s reassuring to think that this may just be a part of our culture in a liberal society. You know, we’re not in a Totalitarian state, we can’t impose one viewpoint on everyone. Everything will be furiously criticised because that’s what happens when you have free speech and liberal values.’ 

There are many on the hard right who view this doubt and self-criticism as a sign of decadence. But people have been saying this for what seems like forever—with both Gibbon in the 18th century, and Spengler in the 20th, trying to link cultural decadence with the ‘decline and fall’ of political or imperial orders. But Marriott takes a much more nuanced view, considering it to be endemic in the cultural lifecycle: ‘I do think that society does go through periods of cultural efflorescences, of brilliant innovation, followed by decadence, followed by renewal, and I think that we are all living in the aftermath of the sixties, which was one of the kind of extraordinary cultural moments in all of history.’ Referencing Ross Douthat’s The Decadent Society—which argues that culture hasn’t developed since the 60s, since ‘you can still go and see the Rolling Stones, follow the same superheroes’—Marriott then ponders whether the “Culture Wars” are simply ‘a part of us throwing off that inheritance and making something new.’

As I shut my laptop and shuffled down to Greggs for lunch, I thought of how I had come away with a renewed sense of Marriott and his ideas. I found he wasn’t as much of a pessimist as he self-deprecatingly claims to be. He’s more of a sceptic, perhaps: what he distrusts, I think, is the notion that any political or cultural viewpoint is wholly correct, and that if there has ever been such a woolly thing called ‘Truth’, it can only be found in the interaction of opposites, in conversation, and—perhaps, most of all—in reading.

By Maisie Jennings

#THEFUTUREISNOW is the hashtag encapsulating this year’s theme for DUCFS – ‘The Age of Inception’, and in its 41st year of running, it’s clear that the show continues to blaze a constantly apexing upward trajectory. This year’s campaign also marked the conception of the DUCFS Thread magazine, and DUCFS Launchpad, an independently funded outreach platform focused on developing creative opportunities across communities in the North East. Creatively and charitably, DUCFS emphasises new beginnings, as well as inciting lasting change into the future. In many ways, there is a multiplicity to the theme of ‘inception’ that concerns the show; it implies a futuristic creative vision, but also a direct engagement with expanding the growth and potential of what is already Europe’s largest student fundraiser. 

Molly Mihell, Vice-President and Creative Director, discusses the forward-looking ethos of DUCFS: ‘I’ve always been interested in looking ahead, in imagining where humanity may go and how innovation may continue to evolve, and I wanted to portray this exciting openness, breadth of possibility and process of constantly changing, developing, through DUCFS 2024’. I think this is a vision particularly resonant in the creative direction and production of walk releases and other promotional material – innovative graphics, dynamic video editing, and sleek visuals centre the creative potential of technology in a way that feels futuristic, elevated, and modern. As always, the amount of work and dedication that bring these shoots to life is astonishing – in having such a cohesive vision, the fashion and creative teams truly succeed in realising this fresh, futuristic take on this year’s campaign. 

Most importantly, DUCFS raises a phenomenal amount of money for charity. Last year, the show, and everybody involved, raised a staggering £221,000 for Rainbow Trust – a charity providing emotional support to families with a seriously ill child. This year, DUCFS is fundraising for CALM (Campaigning Against Living Miserably). CALM is an organisation that campaigns to open conversations about mental health, provide support for people who are struggling, and unite the UK in the fight against suicide. It’s a cause with poignant, heartfelt relevance as suicide becomes the leading cause of death in young people, and DUCFS aims to raise enough money to fund two extra phone lines on CALM’s suicide helpline. The efforts made by models and exec to fundraise for this life-saving cause in the lead up to the show have been phenomenal. There have been marathons, sponsored silences, 24 hour podcasts, and plunges into the freezing water of the North Sea – just to list a few of the brilliant ways the individuals of DUCFS fundraise. Dan Xiberras, one of the show’s 50 models, circumnavigated Palace Green for 24 hours – a massive testament to the enthusiasm and commitment to charitable causes that DUCFS fosters. 

In looking towards, and in many ways, inciting a bigger, brighter future, DUCFS continues to pioneer student fundraising and creativity. If you have managed to secure a ticket, I’m certain that there is, indeed, lots to look forward to.    

By Cosmo Adair

I sleep better when I’ve had something to drink. Apparently, that’s impossible—at least, my brother likes to say so. Everytime I come downstairs on a Saturday morning, having had a few drinks before and after supper, and I say, ‘God, I slept well last night,’ he squints a little before telling me, ‘That’s impossible, scientifically.’ Those five forbidding, unbalanced syllables, with their maliciously rushed ‘ti-fic’ and the slick arrogance of the concluding ‘ly’, exist for the sole purpose of disproving the intimations of my own body. I hate them. 

I’m sure that scientifically, it’s true; I reckon that technically, it might even be correct. No doubt that fictional character, adored by Pollsters and Populists alike, the ‘Man on the Street’ (Who is he? Tell me!) has been rigorously monitored and tested and that was what the results said. So I’m not going to sit here, tapping away, arguing against the scientifically correct. Instead, I want to question how on earth we’ve allowed ourselves to return to some barbarically puritanical mindset in which our own personal experience of what makes us happy, what makes us tick (given that, of course, it’s in moderation: don’t do crack, etc.) means precious little. 

Until recently, the only salvation was that no matter how much said pursuers of the SCIENTIFICALLY-proven might judge your habits, they couldn’t do much about them. But then, last week, the UK’s expiring PM Rishi Sunak announced an imminent ban on smoking for those born after 2009 in what strikes me as a cynical ploy to secure a legacy beyond the immoral expulsion of immigrants to Rwanda. As David Hockney rightly said:  ‘There are too many bossy people in England … Bossy people are humourless. This is just madness to me. Why can’t Mr Sunak leave the smokers alone.’ Sunak (tee-totalist and faster) doesn’t propose to take cigarettes off everyone, only those born after 2009: imagine in 2050, then, the farce in which a forty-two year-old can smoke and a forty-one year-old can’t. It shows the hour hand is moving yet closer to midnight: that midnight being, once again, scientifically proven to occur in Derby in 2050 when the UK’s last cigarette will be smoked, according to a 2019 report. 

Obviously, smoking kills. But, as Hockney writes, ‘The National Health Service will always have to deal with birth and deaths. They are part of life: the cause of death is birth. On the cigarette packet it says “SMOKING KILLS” … well, what do I reply? “LIFE IS A KILLER.” I’m one day nearer oblivion today than I was yesterday. This applies to everybody on the planet.’ As ever, Britain’s preeminent artist (who should live in Britain, but moved to France due to our intrusive smoking laws) is onto something.

As thick and naive as I was when I smoked my first cigarette, I never doubted that it was pernicious. In fact, I reckon that’s why I did it: when you’re young, danger seems sexy and mature, if almost heroic. If smoking is, really, considered ‘cool’ then I think that’s why: because it kills you. Most cool things tend to. (Guns, Flamethrowers, Sports Cars, Alcohol, etc.) But the assumption of Rishi Sunak is that he can tell people how bad smoking is, at which point they will immediately stop and then thank him for this unprecedented enlightenment. In positioning himself against it, I daresay Rishi Sunak has made smoking more cool and more appealing to a lot of people. 

In any discussion of smoking, or of the debates between happiness and longevity, it seems right to recourse to Martin Amis’s novel The Pregnant Widow, in which he writes: ‘He thought, Yeah. Yeah, non-smokers live seven years longer. Which seven will be subtracted by that god called Time? It won’t be that convulsive, heart-busting spell between twenty-eight and thirty-five. No. It’ll be that really cool bit between eighty-six and ninety-three.’ Yes, smoking ends what non-smoking extends. But we must never let ourselves look at human lives as if they are statistics. In this Bureaucracy of Happiness, in which illegality and social pressure take away each slightly individualised form of pleasure, I feel we are all becoming like Auden’s “Unknown Citizen,” of whom the poet asks: 

“Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.”

In arguments of this kind, I always remember a Times interview with France’s leading cancer specialist, David Khayat, who spoke in opposition to what he perceived to be the tyrannical intrusion of an Anglo-Saxon puritanism (diets, teetotalism, avoidance of red meat) on French customs: he spoke of how “The risk we face is of a life without pleasure, a life without enjoyment … And if you force that upon people, they will explode.” He goes on to say that with an immaculately healthy lifestyle, ‘you will be able to avoid old age, illness and death. But that’s wrong. We are all going to grow old, we are all going to fall ill and we are all going to die.’ Thus, we should aim for balanced lives: never the excess of an addict, nor the zeal of an ascetic. And, with Khayat’s backing, I suppose I’m correct here (scientifically).

So, I implore you to stave off the social condescension, the bossiness, and the arrogance which you might adopt in the face of those who seek a healthy balance in their life which includes a bit of pleasure and happiness as opposed to posting a double ton of miserable and waning years. And if not drinking, not smoking, not eating red meats and fatty foods, makes you happy, so be it: your happiness delights me. I do not mean to criticise or infringe upon your happiness. I merely want to shout, alongside Hockney: ‘END BOSSINESS NOW.’

By Ollie de Winton

The first of January arrives, the gym car park is rammed, social media platforms are brimming with aspirations and goals for the year to come. Not forgetting the Duolingo owl, that hounds you to keep up your best effort of a five-day streak, but as we approach the end of the month, are we still upkeeping our resolutions?

There is no doubt that January constitutes a month of change and resolution for so many. Especially being named after the Roman God Janus – a two faced god who looks forward to new opportunities and beginnings, but who also encourages reflection. Romans would embrace this moment of resolution with script readings and familial celebrations. Around 4000 years ago, the Babylonians also welcomed the possibility of change, but instead, in March, when they planted their crops for the year. Along with the planting of crops, they too accompanied the idea of change with a 12-day celebration (Akitu), packed with religious readings, prayers and hopes for the forthcoming year. The same cannot be said for today’s customs: apart from certain communities, many of us go into the new year hungover from the previous night’s antics, and bursting with immense pressure to stick to our, sometimes, unrealistic goals we hold ourselves to.

These goals can worsen the angst often felt at this time of year, especially with over 12 million people in the UK and Northern Europe struggling with ‘Seasonal affective disorder’, or SAD. Upon comparing today’s most popular resolutions to those circa 1950, this angst is unsurprising. Instead of today’s most popular resolutions of losing weight, being more organised, quitting smoking; in the 1940’s-50’s, society was more concerned about improving their disposition, living a better life or being understanding. These are more positive resolutions which are similar in nature to the aims of Janus, welcoming the possibility of positive change in the new year – rather than recent interpretations, promoting the pressure to change. Psychologists have explained that the “‘ideal resolution” is a goal, which is time bound and more importantly, realistic. These ancient resolutions are exactly this – a broader goal, within which one can compartmentalise elements of change/resolution. They are wider, reducing angst and pressure in quests such as quitting smoking, or falling in love.

It’s ironic that the real change we need is locked within the past; hence it is crucial for one to travel back in time, to change their own resolutions and relieve part of the mountain of pressure we place on ourselves at this time of year. This is particularly true in a university environment, with the summative season fully underway. Hopefully, looking to the past will help our future selves, and remind us of the core of resolution.

By Edward Bayliss

A few days ago, Sandra Bond gave us the most brilliantly awful poem in her local regional newspaper as she made her frustrations with the Elgin, or Parthenon Marbles public. The first stanza goes:

The Elgin Marbles are causing quite

a fuss

Greece now wants the return of 

them by us

The statues have been here for a 

really long time 

Do they have to be returned 

after we have looked after them for

such a long time?   

I particularly like the way that Bond rhymes ‘long time’ with…‘long time’ – it really drags out our sense of dread and vexation, both with the author and her subject. The poet, in her inadvertent wisdom and William McGonagallesque doggerel, captures entirely the sense of futility and absurdity in the marbles debate. I feel it is time, thanks to Rishi Sunak’s prompt, to defrost the already 212 year old dispute.

Let’s begin by dispelling some myths peddled by belligerents from both sides:

The argument that Greece is ill-equipped to look after or maintain the statues and friezes is completely untrue. Let’s not kid ourselves, the Parthenon is no longer being used by the Turks as a gunpowder magazine; in 2009 the ‘Acropolis Museum’ opened to the public, ranking 6^th in the TripAdvisor’s Traveller’s Choice Awards for best museums in the world. I think they can manage. 

The marbles were not ‘stolen’. There was an official edict, or firman, drawn up (which exists in translation) and was ratified by a distrustful House of Commons Select Committee in 1816, part of which states that ‘should they wish to take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions, and figures, that no opposition be made.’ This firman involved the Sultan, the civil governor of Athens, and the military commander of the Acropolis citadel. The Greek government had no part in this transaction because it didn’t exist – it was the occupying Ottoman Empire that oversaw it. Many take issue with this fact. But, the Ottomans had control of Greece from as early as the 14^th C., so it can hardly be compared to Nazi sales of Polish or Soviet works of art. 

The ‘slippery slopeists’ are wrong. No, the world will not come rapping its fists on the glass doors of the British museum to reclaim all of their artifacts should we decide to return the marbles. The floodgates will not open. The case of the Elgin Marbles, as the Greek Government itself has gone to great pains to make clear, exists independently. Your Rosetta Stones and your Greek vases are fine.

What is most important is the ethical question of where art belongs. It seems to me that an international conception of culture is the most morally responsible route – one where we aren’t seized by nationalistic urges and feelings of exceptionalism. The marbles aren’t in the British museum for selfish reasons of patriotism and self-aggrandisement. They are there so we can see them alongside other great works – there is beauty and knowledge in cultural and contextual comparison. I, for one, would be proud to see Queen Victoria’s stockings or an 1860 Shropshire postman’s coat in an Eritrean museum.    

So, Sandra, worry not. We share in your frustration – let’s stop arguing and start focusing on the art that has been so long forgotten in the fog of political rhetoric. 

By Cosmo Adair & Maggie Baring.

Bishop Auckland, November 29th — grey with a smattering of drizzle. Standing in the town square, it’s obvious that this isn’t a typical, left-regional town. In the windows of an old, listed, one-time bank, characters from paintings jest with one another, speech bubbles spilling from their mouths onto a dark, tenebrous background. That’s The Spanish Gallery, home to pictures by Murillo, Velazquez and El Greco. Then, ahead, there’s a strange, church-like building — modern, in the openness of its glass and steel, but hinting at times past in its striving Gothic upwardness. That’s Auckland Tower. 

What’s this all doing here? It’s here because Bishop Auckland is home to The Auckland Project: an ambitious regeneration project, instigated by philanthropist Jonathan Ruffer. Passing the tower, we can see him standing on the doorstep of Auckland Castle’s Gatehouse, which he has made his home, waiting for us. He wears an old v-neck jersey over a checked shirt. He greets us with an instinctive, avuncular kindness which is almost disarming. Ruffer behaves as I had once expected University professors might — prone to mental flight, all the while retaining a formidable intellectual sharpness. He seems to belong to an England of yore, one of ‘the old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning’ which Orwell so vividly described. But he is simultaneously a very modern man: his wealth comes from finance, with his firm Ruffer Investment Company listed on the FTSE 250, and The Auckland Project is not quite as quixotic as the tendency to focus on its promotion of Spanish Art would suggest. He is not some Aristocrat of yore spilling cash in the belief that what the North really needs is an exposure to Spanish Art: no, he is motivated by his belief that County Durham needs considerable investment and education in order to kickstart the local economy, create employment opportunities, and in doing so remind the region of its local identity and hopefully encourage its citizens to take more pride in that. 

Ruffer was born in the Northeast of England in 1951. His father was a sea-going Royal Marine during World War II, and he met Ruffer’s mother whilst his ship was being repaired in Newcastle. They settled down just south of Middlesbrough. Ruffer would later attend Cambridge University, where he studied English Literature, despite the fact that ‘[he] didn’t ever discover where the English department was’: something I questioned, at first, given his impressive erudition. He ended up in the City where, he claims, his degree came in handy, given that ‘English is an everyman subject, and losing money in investments is an everyman subject as well.’ To call him ‘successful’ would be an understatement; he went on to become one of the country’s wealthiest men. But inspired by a ‘coup de foudre’ — related, no doubt, to his Christian faith — he decided that ‘What [he] wanted to do was to change the emphasis of [his] life, and the form that took was to be involved in regeneration somewhere in the Northeast.’ Thus followed The Auckland Project. 

Bishop Auckland was not always the inevitable location, but County Durham certainly was. Because, he remarks, whereas Northumberland and Yorkshire still possess a distinct local character, ‘County Durham has lost the sense of who it is.’ And so when the Church of England decided to sell off Auckland Castle and its famous Zurbaran pictures, he went one better: he bought the castle as well. Here was a town in County Durham, rich in history and in possession of some important but little-known Spanish Golden Age pictures — and Ruffer had for a long while been a devoted admirer of both Baroque Art and Spain. It has also ‘turned out to be, strategically, a really astute place.’ It might only have a population of 25,000, ‘but the catchment area is 125,000 and if you look at its sphere of influence, it’s about 350,000 which is bigger than Cardiff. So, in other words, if Bishop Auckland improves, then actually more than half of County Durham improves.’ 

His Christianity and his interest in Art are both important in the direction which The Auckland Project has taken. Much has been said before of the relationship between Religion and Art, but we were both quite spellbound by the acuity of how he described his understanding of it. 

He refers to himself as “Goddy” — a rather charming, if English, manner of lightly and inoffensively describing such a life-defining belief. “I do think … that for  all of us as human beings, there are things that define the nature of who we are. And one of them is power, one of them is sex, one of them is money, and one of them is faith. Now … if you look at Victorian times, what you’ll find is that nobody ever talked about sex, but if they put up a new building, the foundation stones would start with the words, ‘to the Glory of God.’ Now, today, it’s the exact inverse of that … and everybody is very happy to talk about sex. But, in fact, these are fundamental things that drive us, and it is simply that at the moment, that element is in the shadows, but it doesn’t go away.’ 

If Faith, then, is so important, what is its object? ‘It’s to encounter something bigger than yourself. And clearly, the Christian God is like looking at a burning sun without any shade. It’s agonisingly painful to do, because it’s just such a powerful and intense and concentrated thing.’ How, then, do we approach the unapproachable? For Ruffer, we approach it through art, which for him is ‘not the light of the sun, but the light of the moon. The moon isn’t overpowering; moonlight is caressing. It woos you and settles you. But what we know from physics is that moonlight is actually the same as sunlight; they both come from the same place. So I don’t feel, at all, that when I’m talking about art or when I’m talking about the Christian God, that I’m really talking about different things at all.” 

There’s one acquisition which he’s especially focussed on: that’s St. Paul’s Burning of the Hebrew Books, a tapestry by Pieter Coecke van Aelst. It ought to be in the UK because of how well it conforms to the Waverley Criteria, the process by which an object might be deemed a ‘national treasure.’ These are: Is it closely connected with our history and national life? Is it of outstanding aesthetic importance? Is it of outstanding significance for the study of some particular branch of art, learning or history? To Ruffer, the tapestry ticks all three boxes. In fact, he believes that only the coronation spoon is of equivalent importance. 

It was made for Henry VIII during the Reformation. It depicts St. Paul to symbolically represent a break from Rome, where St. Peter and the Petrine liturgy were dominant. But, historically, the liturgy in England had been Pauline, and so Henry’s ‘effectively saying the Pope is the head of the One Church, but I’m the head of the other church. And so the rest of the depiction which is the burning of the heathen books is a quotation of what St. Paul did in Ephesus in Acts. And what Henry was doing was saying, ‘I’ve done that, I’ve burned all the Tyndale bibles, killed a few of them too.’ Here, again, Ruffer excels: he explains church history and a complicated artistic work in a way that’s both rigorous and accessible. 

The problem is, however, that this tapestry is in Spain. It had been missing since 1770 when it disappeared from Hampton Court Palace until it turned up with a dealer who ‘worked out that this was the thing which had gone missing in 1770, whereupon the Spanish Minister of Culture slapped on an export ban. And so that’s what [he’s] fighting.’ So far, his campaign’s going well. ‘We’ve got both archbishops, the top four bishops: Canterbury, York, London and Durham. And we’ve got Prime Ministers behind us, and we’ve got Wayzgoose behind us,’ he jokes. 

Naively, we ask whether he has any Spanish connections who could help him out. ‘Yes, yes, I mean I’m a trustee of the Prado. And I must say one of the things I’m quite allergic to is titles, you know, people who go around … saying ‘I’ve got an OBE.’ But … one of the things which did randomly come my way is I’m a Spanish Knight, I’m an Encomienda of the Order of Isabel the Catholic, Isabella la Cattolic, who is Catherine of Aragon’s mum, so I play that one for all it’s worth. But I’m about as Spanish as an English mousetrap.’ Given his connections, and given what he has managed to acquire so far, I have a feeling that the Encomienda Ruffer will acquire the tapestry eventually. And much like the Greeks awaiting the return of the Elgin Marbles, he has set up The Faith Museum, which awaits the return of the tapestry. ‘Its temperature and humidity are controlled, which costs some millions to do, with nothing in it … we’ve got what those historical old palaces and the V&A haven’t got, [which is] somewhere suitable to put it. 

Our discussion drew to an end. Initially, we had been booked in for a half-an-hour chat but he kept us for an hour and fifteen minutes in a thrilling, wide-ranging discussion. Coming away, one thing struck both of us about him: it was the sheer thrill and interest he took in other people. Throughout our session, he asked about us, about the magazine, about university, and about where we both grew up. This was not some elaborate diversion tactic, but a reflection of his natural curiosity. He treated us with a seriousness that made it feel — at least for us — as if he did not differentiate between The Times, The Telegraph, and Wayzgoose Magazine. He is so passionate about his project that he would take hours to proselytise anyone — from the Prime Minister to a Student Journalist — about the importance of what The Auckland Project is getting up to. 

But this welcoming curiosity of his extends beyond mere journos. Later, chatting to one of the gallery attendants about Jonathan, we said how impressed we’d been by this aspect of him. To which, she simply replied: ‘That’s Jonathan for you.’ Which, I think, it really is.