Christian and me in Brussels last week...

Today I made a quick trip to Paris, to the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council, for a working lunch with the ESEC Secretary General, Christian Dors, and an ESEC member who is also an EESC member, Joseph Guimet. My trip followed hard on the heels of a visit of the ESEC’s President to Brussels and, indeed, profited from the warm afterglow of that visit in order to consolidate our good relations. I and the ESEC’s Secretary General, Christian Dors, have similar tasks and challenges, and it is good to swap notes on these and other related themes.

The back of the ESEC headquarters building, the Palais d’Iena, looks out over a fairly scruffy modern office block (picture). Until a few days ago, the building housed the officials of a European organization, Western European Union, which has now, thanks to the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions on a common foreign and security policy, disappeared (it will disappear completely as of July this year, I believe). It is, if you like, a piece of history in the unmaking. It reminds me of our own ‘shrine’ to the European Coal and Steel Community (born 1952, died 2002) on the third floor of the Jacques Delors Building in Brussels. The difference is that the initial Treaty of Paris was signed for a duration of fifty years. Thus, the ECSC simply expired. The WEU, on the other hand, was created by an open-ended Treaty (the 1948 Treaty of Brussels) that was simply overtaken by events and therefore dissolved: a rare example of a disappearing organisation.

As part of our university visits, this morning we walked around Bloomsbury and the various buildings belonging to University College – in effect, we had gone from one University College to another. This was once my stamping ground. As a teenager I would get the train up to Euston and then walk through Bloomsbury on my way to the British Museum, a trip always finished off with a visit to Maskelyne’s magic shop opposite the museum (alas, the shop is no more), where I would buy ‘cheap tricks’. Later, my then girlfriend went to UCL and the Jeremy Bentham became my local (pub). I have always been enchanted by the atmosphere of this part of London, a mixture of learning and culture. N° 1 sprog is studying philosophy and has been getting to grips with utilitarianism, so I took her to meet the real Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, who now resides in a glass-fronted wooden cabinet at the entrance to UCL’s main building – all of him, that is, apart from his mummified head, which now resides in the University’s safe.

Look for the rust stains at the bottom

One of my fellow guests at High Table was Sir David Butler, one of the founding fathers of British psephology and, through our co-authoring of several books, a good friend. One of the pleasures of working with David is his seemingly inexhaustible treasury of anecdotes about people and places. I got him to tell Sir Ivor the one about the Duke of York’s column. Here it is, as best I could note it down. One day in 1947, as David walked past the column, his good friend, Tony Benn, pointed to a set of rusty stains on the marble column and stated that those stains represented the history of the parliamentary question. In 1855 two drunken cavalry officers had raced their horses up the steps from the Mall to the column for a bet. Viscount Dylan, an old General and an MP had put a question in parliament to the Secretary of State for war about whether such high jinks were appropriate. The minister subsequently posted a sentry at the foot of the column. Then, in the 1870s when it was pouring with rain, somebody noticed a poor sentry standing in the wet and the first Commissioner of Works decided, following another parliamentary question, that a glass canopy should be affixed to the column. In the 1890s an economy-minded MP asked in parliament whether a sentry was necessary. The sentry was removed. And then (if I have got the story right) in 1970 Tony Benn asked, via a parliamentary question, for the canopy to be removed. This was done, crudely, with a hacksaw, but the metal stubs of the supports remained, rusted and created the two stains visible still today on the column…

Sir Ivor Crewe

This evening I dined at High Table at University College as a guest of the Master, Sir Ivor Crewe. Many moons ago, as a callow PhD student, I visited Sir Ivor at Essex University, for long his academic stronghold. I was interested in empirical measurements of how much constituents knew their MEPs (at the time, surely very little). Sir Ivor countered by pointing out that, actually, constituents knew very little about their Westminster MPs. He had written a book on the subject. The book never got published and, in an act I have never forgotten, Sir Ivor gave me the original typescript. This was in the days before ubiquitous photocopiers. I was deeply impressed and very grateful. It was, therefore, with characteristic generosity that Sir Ivor and his wife, Jill, graciously hosted drinks and dinner this evening. I explained to Jill how the late, great Maurice Shock gave me my first big break in life by encouraging ‘Univ.’ to open up its selection procedures to students from state schools and relatively modest origins. I was a happy beneficiary of this enlightened approach. She, in return, explained how Univ., commendably, has maintained the tradition and has one of the most active outreach programmes of any of the Oxford colleges. It was, quite simply, good to be back.

OK, I admit it. What follows is shameless name dropping. We spent the day visiting the university. In the evening we ended up at my old college, University College (‘Univ.’), at the Master’s Lodgings. We were royally received by the Master, Sir Ivor Crewe, and his wife, Jill, but I hadn’t expected what ‘came next’. Every new student who comes to University College, Oxford, must ‘enroll’ in the College register. Though I had forgotten it, I did so, and Jill showed us what I had written, which was very touching. She then showed us the writings of some other, far more famous, ‘old boys’; Stephen Hawkings, for example. In the picture, though, is the writing of, arguably, one of Univ’s best known old boys, Bill Clinton, who came as a Rhodes scholar. As Jill pointed out, the chap who had decided to write in gothic script just two places above Bill will be forever remarked upon with a frequency he could never have imagined!

Three posts on the new Ashmolean museum may be considered a bit much, but I think the restructuring and extension are a great success. As an undergraduate I was a frequent visitor to the museum. I could gaze at my all time favourite Paolo Uccello painting (The Hunt in the Forest) for hours, and the collection is so varied and rich that there was always something to be discovered. But I have to admit that the old Ashmolean was fusty and dark and cluttered. Now there is light and a splendid central atrium. This weekend a festival of theatre, opera, dance and drama , ‘Pots and Plays’, was being held in the museum, consisting of newly-commissioned works inspired by ancient Greek artifacts in the museum. I have tried to capture one of the performers in my picture, whilst also demonstrating the wonderful sweeping geometrical forms of the new atrium.

Here’s another exquisite and historical object on display in the Ashmolean: ‘the robe of the King of Virginia’. It was the mantle of Powhatan, King of the tribe that lived where the Jamestown settlement was established. Powhatan was the father of Princess Pocohontas. The description relates that the mantle may have had some function, such as a temple hanging, rather than being a garment. The beautiful patterns are made out of hundreds of tiny shells, sewn into the leather. The gaps are thought to be early examples of vandalism, previous generations of visitors having stolen shells as souvenirs (the mantle used to hang unprotected on a wall).

We (N° 1 sprog and yours truly) are in Oxford, staying with a dear friend, at the beginning of a tour of UK universities. Before the visit got underway, this morning we went to the new Ashmolean museum. The netsuke to the left is, in reality, tiny (I took a photograph of a poster) and is just one of a series of fascinating objects on display. Note the rat’s tail and the rat catcher’s expression of anger and frustration. Exquisite!