The Trigan Empire

The surprise gift this Christmas was a copy of Tales from the Trigan Empire, a large comic, or graphic novel, volume published in 1989. This is clearly not the kind of thing that I would normally read, but it brought back so many memories of childhood. When I was eleven or twelve (1973-74) my parents subscribed to the children’s magazine Look and Learn and each week I devoured all the different, undoubtedly educational, articles within it. I always left the best bit till last, the back cover, which contained the next instalment of the Trigan Empire. I do not now remember anything about the content of the magazine, except for those images, drawn I now know by Don Lawrence, and of those I remember only one of the stories (but more of that later).

The Trigan empire is essentially Rome with added technology, a kind of ultimate steam punk taken way beyond the Victorian era. The costume and the social context are Roman. The technology is, or was, somewhat ahead of the contemporary with atmospheric flying craft, hover vehicles, space travel and ray guns. The stories were heroic and always had a happy ending, although they could spread over many weeks with serious scrapes and cliff hangers from week to week.

What attracted me was inevitably images of hunky young men in short skirts. This was an entirely homo-social society. It was clearly misogynistic, although to be fair women were simply absent, and even in the book version there are only two or three female characters. The heroes end up, very briefly, in one story in a society ruled by female warriors, but otherwise the women, with one exception, are bit parts or entirely absent. The only woman with anything like an important role is the daughter of the chief scientist, philosopher, and inventor of the Empire.

Having no women there is also no romance, no love interest, no distractions from the heroic activities of the key players (the emperor, his brother, his nephew and the nephew’s companions in the imperial air force). The villains, and even most of the monsters, as far as one can tell, are also entirely male. This is not homoerotic, apart from the images. It is not erotic at all and does not hint of relationships of anything other than friendship between the core group of companions. This is original boys’ own stuff, boys who were not expected to be interested in girls, or at least not yet.

The stories are also implicitly, and often very explicitly, racist. Even in 1989, when this book-long version was published, it all looks very dated. True, the leading figure, Keren (the emperor’s nephew’s best friend) is always coloured blue and has dark hair. He could, at a push, be seen as ‘black’. The emperor and his family are all blond haired and clearly white, if not distinctly Aryan. It is, however, the enemies, the ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’ beyond the Empire, and even the peasants within it, who are represented in very stereotypical fashion (more Middle Eastern rather than from the far east or Africa). In this it also, perhaps, represents a ‘Roman’ attitude to the other. Those within the Empire, of whatever ethnicity or colour, could be Roman and a citizen of Rome, while those beyond the borders of the Empire are barbarians and somewhat less than human.

So why has the Trigan Empire stayed in my memory? Partly, I guess, is that I was reading it at a very impressionable age, the age for which the stories are clearly written. It had heroism, adventure, risk, hand to hand combat, evil villains and monsters, technology and style. All this made a strong impression on me and many of the images have stuck with me. But it is the one story that I remember that probably has much to do with the lasting memory.

I was not a fast or prolific reader as a child. Dyslexia meant these graphic narratives became more significant. I was also never allowed to read real comics (Batman, the Eagle or whatever) as my parents didn’t think that they were intellectual enough. It is rather ironic, therefore, that the one element of the (obviously intellectual) magazine that they did buy for me I appreciated, and remembered, more than any other was the comic strip on the back. However, this was also one of the few arenas, before the age of about thirteen when I did take to books in a big way, that I engaged with narrative and story, and so with the intellectual ideas that were contained within those stories.

The story I have always remembered is not contained in the volume I received for Christmas. It moved away from the emperor and his family and started with man in a crowd who buys a lottery ticket from another man in the crowd. The lottery ticket, inevitably, wins and the man who bought it gains a great fortune. The person he buys it from is furious and starts to stalk the winner, discovering in the process that he has invented time travel. I forget how the story concludes, what was needed to destroy the time machine, or whatever else might have happened. It undoubtedly had a happy (distinctly moral) ending, all these stories do. What has always struck me, however, was the stark expression of the dangers, and possible benefits, of time travel. I was undoubtedly watching Dr Who at the same time, but that did not have the same immediate impact.

It was the written/drawn form of the story that fixed the idea in my head. The wider frame was also significant, the imaginative leap to a Roman society with contemporary technology. This also raised interesting intellectual questions and narrative possibilities. It has always been the ideas contained in narrative, their implications, variations, multiplication etc. that have interested me, and, it appears, I probably learnt much of that, for the first time in a conscious fashion, from the stories of the Trigan Empire. It is good to be reminded.

The Pleasure of Reading J G Frazer

Having just completed the third volume of J G Frazer’s thirteen volume version of the Golden Bough, I have to say that I am really enjoying it far more than I would ever have imagined. I don’t think I could read all thirteen volumes one after the other, but with a short break between them to read other things, it is something of a pleasure to get back to Frazer.

Frazer is, of course, a great writer when he wants to be. There is an incredible amount of repetition and attention to detail, lists of examples that just seem to go on for page after page, but when he begins to focus on one aspect of the wider narrative or another, and to tell a story, or to paint a picture (often fanciful and highly romantic) of some tradition or another, then the language begins to soar and I am caught up in it all.

It is not just the language, however, that draws me in. I know that so much of the theory, the ideas that attempt to bring the whole text together, are idle speculation. At some point, as I work through the other eleven volumes, I will no doubt address that in more detail. I also know that he is dependent on half understood tales from non-specialists, each with their own motivations and biases, of events and ideas from across the world. There is little here that you could safely rely on as ‘ethnography’. Finally, Frazer is a colonial figure, an evolutionist, and a racist. Ideas that are clearly offensive in today’s world permeate the text and its language in a way that sometimes does make it difficult to read without getting utterly annoyed and angry.

Despite all this, however, I find the flow, the accumulation of ‘fact’ and the slow building of evidence to be captivating. There are probably two or three things that do appeal to me. The first is the knowledge and evidence from the classical world. I know this far less than the ethnographic material that Frazer quotes between the classical examples. I guess that if I did know the works he is referencing, then I might find this material just as problematic as the ethnographic work. The interpretation of the texts is probably way off the mark. I do not know whether, as evidence of any particular practice, it is a correct interpretation or not. I guess the examples are highly unlikely to reflect any real practice, at least as Frazer has interpreted them.

Again, it is not the detail, the factuality, that appeals. It is the recognition in Fazer’s writing of complexity. There is a very real sense of a diverse, complex, and constantly changing ancient world, with very few fixed points. There is no sense of simplification in this text. The work begins with a particular ritual, in a specific place, just outside Rome, and it expands out to take in so much of the rest of the ancient world. Communalities are recognised and celebrated, but always with difference and always with local variation and colour. Even in one place things are seen to change and to evolve. There is a fluidity to the reality that Frazer is describing that I have to say that I did not expect. I have no idea how accurate it is (I know the ‘pre-histories’ are entirely speculation, either Frazer’s or that of the authors he is quoting) but the variety, the complexity, and the sophistication of ancient ritual (it is not ‘religion’ that is being looked at here, but that is another story), I find fascinating.

More broadly than this sense of complexity, however, it is the way in which Frazer is consistently changing focus that I find most appealing. Frazer’s work is often described as ‘comparative’ and there is a long debate about the value, or otherwise, of comparative analysis (be it of religion or any other elements of culture). Frazer does not address that. He simply takes it for granted that the comparative method can produce interesting and provocative results. However, beyond the comparative, it is the way in which Frazer moves from the detailed, tightly focused analysis of a specific ritual, story or religious context, at one moment, to a broad-brush speculation on what it is to be human, at another. He is clear that one or other of these approaches can never be enough in and of itself.

The detailed analysis may be based on limited evidence, and even on misreadings. But it is, within the limitations of its own time, detailed, disinterested and part of a real attempt to understand and express what is going on, often from the participants own point of view. There is a recognition that this is a different world, a different thought process, a different understanding of reality from that of the reader, and Frazer does his best to make it explicable and even ‘familiar’ to the reader. He does have an eye for detail, and it is this, I would suggest, that underpins the sense of complexity that I get from the engagement with the classical literature and ethnographic examples.

On the other hand, however, Frazer’s focus can quickly move onto the larger, or even the largest, stage and he can begin to bring together large quantities of data, from many different sources (never questioning of analysing the sources as such) to make bold and challenging statements about the way humans engage with nature, with the world as they understand it, with each other, and with spiritual forces. It is the balance, the tension between the detail and the comparative that I find so compelling, the constant movement and flow in ideas. It is surprisingly easy to follow (so long as you have a good memory for pages and pages of specific examples) and each section is carefully constructed. As a reader you feel that you are being led on a journey that is at times looking at the details of a particular rite or village and at others opens out to vast, expansive views. It is exhilarating, and while it may all be absolute twaddle, it is a masterpiece of extended academic writing, perhaps even of nineteenth century myth making.

Is the Doctor a Vampire

The other night I woke up in the middle of a dream about Dr Who. I have no idea what the narrative of the dream was, but the question that stuck in my mind, as I woke up, was whether the Doctor should be seen as a vampire.

This may not be quite as odd as it sounds. Russell T. Davie’s relaunch of the Doctor, with David Tennant, has just completed on television, with the third episode released over the weekend. I have also been enjoying the revisioning of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire over the last few weeks. So, I guess both experiences have got themselves a little confused in my mind.

I love the Dr Who series (all of them, without preference) and over the last however many months that I was at Swansea I watched the whole of the new cycle through on catch up, one a night for however long it took. It was great to see how the various themes and motifs played out over time. Having recently watched the last episode of the latest series, live as it were, then Dr Who is certainly a firm fixture in my head.

Likewise with vampires. As part of my work on myth I am reading what I can of histories (mostly popular and polularist) of vampire literature, films, and other forms. In the first version I ever gave of my thinking on myth, a series of lectures to first year students on the Introduction to Religion module at Birmingham University, one of the lectures was on the ‘natural history of the vampire’ and that model has stayed with me and should have a place in book that I am currently writing.

What this section would consist of, effectively, is a brief (and unscholarly) outline of the development of popular narratives on vampires from the mid-eighteenth century to the current day. This begins with the vampire as a local person who has died in unusual, often violent, circumstances, a person who is known to the victims and whose existence only really lasts a matter of months till the corpse is dug up, mutilated or burnt.

The story then transforms, through romanticism, into the aristocratic loner and immortal figure seen in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, followed by many copies, especially in sensational theatre productions and the early films. In the mid-twentieth century the vampire moves from its lonely, isolated existence with the growth of communities, or even whole societies of vampires, and what might be described as ‘vampire culture’. Ann Rice, and the first film of the Interview is important here.

Finally, towards the end of the century, the vampire gets a makeover, often becoming vegetarian, but essentially emerging as the love interest and the romantic hero. Of course, the ‘history’ is far more complex than this, and others have set this out in much more detail, and with much more sophistication. It is not the details of the history itself that concerns me, however, rather the way in which a narrative theme can transform over time, driven both by social circumstances and by the natural selection of what appeals to the popular imagination at each transformation of the subject.

The other interest of the vampire narrative is the way in which key themes or motifs remain central and keep recurring despite the transformation of the plot. There is a code associated with vampires, their habits and the factors that help to control them. These do change over time, and it appears, across space, but the fact of a code is one of the constants that drives the narrative itself. It is the knowledge about the habits of the vampire, and knowledge of how to destroy a vampire, that is often central to the plot.

A final question, however, comes with the definition of a vampire. What distinguishes vampires from other forms of horror? The vampire is essentially a dead human person. That rules out some other forms of monsters, or transformations of live humans, such as werewolves etc. The vampire is physical, the body of the vampire is the body of the dead human, and so clearly not a ghost or a spirit. The vampire also retains something of the personality and intellect of the human person, so distinguishing it from zombies and other related creatures. Finally, the vampire preys on living humans, most commonly by drinking blood, but sometimes by sucking out their soul, and slowly draining them of life. This allows a sub-set of vampire narratives in which a living person acts in a vampiric way, preying on another living person and draining them of their life, reducing them to a shadow of their former self.

It is at this point, I would suggest, that we come back to Dr Who. We could talk about the loner, aristocratic element of the Doctor, something that relates directly to the classic narrative of the vampire (as does the dress sense in many cases). The Doctor is also, like the vampire, eternal and becomes the Doctor through transformation following death. There are already hints, therefore, that make an association of the two somewhat plausible. Many episodes, or story lines, also work on the principle of life, or energy, that is sapped and misappropriated, usually by the villain, in a very vampiric fashion.

However, there is also a constant sub-narrative in the Dr Who series, which sees the enemies of the Doctor accusing him of being a destructive force for evil in the universe, leading to the deaths and destruction of many lives and many civilisations. This is often taken very personally by the Doctor, leading him/her to challenge their very identity and purpose in the world.

One element of this, less often stated, but highlighted specifically in the most recent episode, is the relationship between the Doctor and their companions (an essential part of the Dr Who narrative as any code is for vampire narratives). In this relationship the Doctor gains vitality almost at the expense of the companion. This is not often seen within specific episodes, or even over complete series, but the very fact that the companion is ultimately disposable, being left at the end of each manifestation of the Doctor (and often returning having an ambiguous relationship with newer versions of the Doctor), can be seen as the Doctor using up the life force, the enthusiasm, even the life of the companions in an essentially vampiric relationship.

Perhaps that is pushing things a little too far. The Doctor for me will always be an ambiguous being, that is part of the joy of the series, and something that is well understood by the writers, but would I go as far as to see the Doctor as a ‘vampire’ in absolute terms? Perhaps not. It is just as a rather interesting exercise in narrative topology, and I like the idea of playing with the possibilities. That, and asking what the hell was really going on in that dream?

The Akan Doctrine of God

I have just finished reading Joseph Buakye Danquah’s book on the Akan doctrine of God. This was written in 1941 and first published in 1944. It was part of a larger attempt to bring together the thought and ideas of the Akan people but much of the rest of the text was destroyed in a fire. The version I read was republished in 1968 with an introduction by Kwesi A. Dixon. It appears to have been republished as an e-book in 2013 and the same edition has been republished a couple of times in more recent years.

At first sight there is nothing remarkable about this book and it has certainly not gained great notoriety or even, as far as I can see, much of a position in the history of African thought. Danquah is better known for his political opposition to Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. However, as an anthropologist who has written about the Dogon this book about Akan thought raises all kinds of rather interesting questions.

Marcel Griaule published his most famous book, Dieu D’Eau, or as the English translation titles it, ‘Conversations with Ogotemmêli; An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas’, in 1948. This book is well known and is almost always referenced, usually alongside Placide Temples La Philosophe Bantoue (1949) as being among the first texts to present an African philosophy (although both Griaule and Temples were, of course, European). These two works have, interestingly, often been regarded as the starting point for an approach to African philosophy that is based on proverbs, what is often considered in the literature as the quintessential form of African thought.

Griaule’s work is also critiqued for developing the mythic thought of one elderly, blind, hunter, and passing this off as the ‘deep thinking’ of the Dogon people, that which is only ever achieved through many years of initiation. This is not what Griaule was doing, or what he ever said that he was doing. In the text Griaule simply presents the ideas as those developed spontaneously over a series of nightly conversations with the blind hunter Ogotemmêli. Griaule never claims that these are anything more than the reflections of one man, what he refers to as the equivalent of a theologian in Western society. Reflections that are certainly rooted in the traditional thought of the Dogon, but not in any sense a definitive statement of that thought.

Some five or six years earlier, however, another African philosopher was setting out, in a written text of his own, the religious, philosophical, and primarily the ethical thought of his own people, the Akan of Ghana. There is a world of difference between Ogotemmêli and Danquah, and between their texts, but the two men were reflecting on the deeper things in life at much the same time and only 1000km apart. Many young men among the Dogon at the time also travelled regularly down to Ghana, or the Gold Coast as it was then, looking for work. The two worlds are not all that far apart.

There are probably many reasons why Danquah’s work has not had the reception that perhaps it should. Dixon in his introduction suggests some, including the fact that Danquah does not present a very recognisable version of Akan religion, ignoring the important role of lesser deities and placing the emphasis on a monotheistic high god, who is known in three aspects. This suggests that Danquah may have been trying to make Akan religion sound like Christianity. Although, if he had wanted to do that, I think he would have made more effort to do so. He understands Christianity and highlights many similarities, as well as many differences. It is the ancient Arcadian religions of Iraq and Iran that Danquah looks to as the closest relation to Akan religious thought, but that might also be another reason why his work has lost its credibility.

More significant, I think, is the way in which Danquah places Akan thought alongside and in dialogue with Western philosophical traditions. He was educated at University College London and his own writing is deeply rooted in the Western tradition, from Aristotle to Hegel to more recent English philosophers. This is the language that he draws on to present his understanding of Akan religion, its understanding of God, and its ethics. This is a highly intellectual tradition. Danquah is clear that just as there is a tradition of Greek thought, and a tradition of Hebrew thought (which are not the same in his view) so there is also a tradition of Akan thought, and each of these has something significant to offer to the wider, overall, thought of humanity. In his presentation the contribution of Akan thought is primarily its rejection of original sin and the working of humanity towards the goal of goodness, as exemplified in the nana, or head of the family, tribe, nation or people.

Danquah is also not afraid, or embarrassed, to use the writings of earlier anthropologists working on the Akan as important sources on the thinking of the Akan. He does question some of their conclusions, particularly the derivation of words and their understanding of language, but he does not question their right to attempt to present Akan thought and welcomes the fact that they have provided an important starting point for his own thinking.

What is also interesting, however, is that Danquah’s own ideas are firmly rooted in proverbs, far more so than Ogotemmêli’s ever were. Proverbs are a core carrier of ideas and values among the Akan. This is one reason some Western commentators believe that they are important across Africa, which is not the case. However, it is often the same commentators who are desperate to build ‘African religion’, most clear expressed in the Ubuntu tradition (more of which, perhaps, at another time), on the ‘traditional thought’ or African peoples, traditional thought that is often generated, perhaps even created, by Western anthropology. E. E. Evans Pritchard is often credited with offering the first full presentation of ‘African religion’ in his book on Nuer Religion (not published till 1956) but once again this is worlds away from Danquah’s presentation of the religion of the Akan.

So yes, this is a very interesting book, even if much of its content would not be entirely relevant today (Danquah does not recognise a world in which religion has no place, whether in Africa or the West!). It is certainly a book that should be remembered and celebrated for what it is.

Coming Out and Coming Out Again

When asked to write about my ‘coming out story’ shortly after taking up the position of PVC at Swansea University eight years ago, my immediate response was to ask ‘which one?’ I have perhaps been lucky, I never needed a big coming out event. Being gay is something I have always taken for granted and accepted as being part of me. My parents never had any serious problems with it, and, while I did have a long conversation with Mum, my Dad simply adjusted to the fact that ‘Martin has a boyfriend’ and that was fine. I have never in that sense deliberately ‘come out’ and yet I have found, over the years, that coming out is a continual process, something that has to happen in some shape or form every time I meet new people and want to them to understand who I am and to accept me for who I am.

This struck me particularly when I took up my role as Pro-Vice Chancellor at Swansea University. Before moving to Swansea I had been working in the University of Birmingham for over twenty years and most people who bothered to take an interest in these things knew that I was gay and had a partner. I taught on a module on ‘feminist, black and gay theologies’ for a number of years within the Department of Theology and Religion. Gay and lesbian students felt comfortable approaching me to discuss issues relating to sexuality, whether personal or theological and I appreciated their trust and openness. I mentored a number of gay or lesbian staff and students as part of formal LGBT+ mentoring schemes, and my partner was well known to immediate colleagues.

Being gay, therefore, was something that played no significant role as I increasingly took on management roles and moved up the University structure. I do remember, however, the mild look of surprise on the Vice Chancellor’s face when, having been appointed to a senior leadership position, I introduced my partner to him at an event organised for senior management to which my ‘wife’ was included on the invite (the University did not make that mistake twice!).

Having taken up my new role at Swansea, however, I was, perhaps for the first time, in a position where I have had to make a deliberate decision about when to ‘come out’ and how to do this. My standard response has always been to treat being gay as perfectly normal and to wait for conversations to reveal that normalcy. Many people asked me ‘have you got a family?’ The answer is ‘yes, David, my partner, two dogs, however many tortoises and a couple of chickens’. Others ask ‘are you moving to Swansea?’ and I have to say that it is unlikely in the short term as ‘my partner runs a business that would be very difficult to move across the country’.

Very occasionally somebody apologised as if they have trodden on delicate ground, but for the vast majority the conversation simply continues, discussing the particular breed of dogs (otterhounds if you are interested) or specific issues around the antiquarian book trade. It is not a ‘big deal’ but I was perhaps more conscious of it on that occasion simply because of the very large number of new people that I met over the my first six months in post. ‘Coming out’, in that sense, never really stops, and now I have left Swansea and I am moving into new engagements and activities I can begin to see the situation emerge again. The only difference now is that I do tend to take the initiative. I make it clear that I am gay, have a longstanding partner, and this is part of who I am even before I am asked.

I do have to say, however, that the openness and welcome that I received in Swansea all those years ago made that process so much more pleasurable and reassuring. The support, and perhaps even the lack of any special interest or recognition that I was any different, has also been very significant. A university is, perhaps, a particularly positive place to be ‘out’, but I am also finding that in many other contexts being gay is not a big thing. Other people are less likely to make assumptions, and, as I said at the start of this blog, I know that I have been very lucky in this, and I remain very grateful.

Another Tragedy for Armenia

My partner and I have been passionate about Armenia for many years. We love Armenian music, Armenian art and architecture, the romance of the Armenian church, everything about Armenia, its history and its people. It is with great sadness therefore that we have been watching the news over the last week or so and seeing that, once again, the Armenian people are suffering and nobody, or practically nobody, is coming to their aid.

We have travelled to Armenia on two occasions, and twice to parts of eastern Turkey that have strong Armenian links. On our first trip to Armenia we travelled on to Georgia and I was very struck by the fact that all the stories we heard in Armenia were tinged with tragedy, not just over the last hundred years, but throughout its history, while those told in Georgia were stories infused with joy, if not directly with comedy.

The Armenian genocide, commemorated in a wonderful museum and monument in the heart of Yerevan is a moving and defining narrative for all Armenians. A whole population being slaughtered and driven out of their homelands in what is now Turkey, with many hundreds of thousands dying on the way. The current movement of people from Nagorno Karabakh holds memories of the genocide, but thankfully with far fewer casualties. I guess we can be thankful, even for small mercies.

A friend of ours lives in Gori, down by the border with Azerbaijan, and in the previous war he was very aware of the closeness of Azeri forces, the bombing and the shelling. That was a tense time, especially in his concern for his elderly mother and whether he would have a house to return to. Now the town is overrun with refugees, and everybody is welcoming strangers into their houses, doing what they can to support those fleeing from the aftermath of this most recent war.

On our second visit we travelled over into Nagorno Karabakh, or Artsakh as it is known to Armenians. The lasting memories for me were to look out over the border into Azerbaijan and see a town abandoned on the border, and also to visit the graveyard in the capital, Stepanakert, and see that all the graves of the soldiers, each with a picture of the man who had been killed, and to note that they were all much the same age as myself. That was very sobering, as was the daily reports of soldiers being wounded or dying in clashes on the boarder that never really ceased.

The land, however, is not just a series of villages and farms. We also visited ruins and monasteries that told of many centuries of Armenian history. I am sure that there are other monuments that tell of the histories of others who have lived on that land. Under the USSR there was a mixed population, neither completely Armenian, nor completely Azeri. In the war that followed the demise of the USSR, with Turkey supporting Azeri troops and the Russians backing Armenia, the process of ethnic separation, and ethnic cleansing was begun, each side calling on the doctrine of self determination to claim the land for their own people.

The Armenians predominated in that first conflict and, with the aid of Russian peacekeepers, the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh sought to develop their own republic, to practice self-determination. That was only ever going to be possible, however, with the tacit support of Russia. Turkey backed Azerbaijan and armed them in the most recent attacks. And now Russia, partly because of the distraction of Ukraine, partly because Armenian politicians have looked to the west and have had the courage to condemn Russia, but also partly because Russia is seeking to curry favour with Azerbaijan, the support and the protection that had been offered by Russian troops has disappeared.

As so often before in their history, therefore, the Armenians have become the pawns in much larger political movements, and have suffered as a consequence. There have been times in their two to three thousand year history when they were dominant in the area, if only for short periods. However, like all the other peoples of the region their lands have been fought over by larger empires, and despite brief periods of ever hopeful independence and self-determination, they have generally been crushed once again, so leading to their deep-rooted sense of tragedy.

Tragedy, however, does not mean lack of hope. Armenians have spread across the world, and we have attended churches in Manchester, London, Paris, Thessaloniki and New York. They have a strong sense of identity and great hope for the future. Events such as those of the last week or so, however, can do nothing to lift the mood of tragedy and sadness that is such a significant part of their history. Our most recent visit to Armenia coincided with the centenary of the genocide in 1915 and I always recall the text that accompanied the logo for the centenary ‘I remember and demand’.

Reflecting on Excellence

We have just come through the league table season, with the Guardian, the Times and even the new look TEF, each offering their versions of the best universities in the UK. On LinkedIn and elsewhere colleagues are finding the numbers that position their universities in the best light and telling the world that they are ‘number one’ in … whatever it is, or in the top ten, top twenty or whatever it is, in this, that or the other league table.

Swansea University was always very good at league tables, and I leant a great deal from colleagues about how to make the most of the different scores and how to crunch the figures in a way that would give us the best outcomes. League tables are important to student recruitment, and to morale, but it is not entirely clear whether what they are measuring is really ‘excellence’ as so many people assume. It may be one kind of excellence, but it is only that form of excellence that the press, and the marketeers, have chosen to highlight.

Meanwhile the press, and government ministers, also peddle the idea of ‘mediocre teaching’, of a ‘lack of student engagement’, of ‘mickey mouse degrees’ and substandard outcomes. The NSS scores, which underpin many of the league tables, continue to demonstrate that across the sector student satisfaction with both teaching and student engagement remains as high as ever, despite all the changes to the process, with no universities doing dramatically badly. Other surveys do raise questions about the student’s sense of ‘value for money’, aspects of student mental health and other concerns, but it is difficult to turn these into a message about ‘mediocre teaching’ or substandard outcomes. All this talk of failure and mediocrity is simply a useful line to justify the government’s inaction and to appeal to a particular section of the public (whom, it is assumed, are not positive in their view of universities).

Many of my evenings over the last few months or so, however, have been spent with one eye on the incredible sporting achievements of the summer (not least the rugby, which I never thought I would get really excited about before ending up in Swansea!) and one ear on the Proms, both outstanding examples of excellence in practice. While we can, both as individuals and as nations, take great pride in these achievements and they clearly lift the morale of the community, we do have to recognise that in each case we are talking about a very small elite in terms of the excellence of practice.

I could never aspire to excellence in sport. I would find it very difficult to identify a sport where I would even be considered ‘mediocre’. That does not mean that I do not enjoy watching it and do not recognise excellence when I see it. Whether it is the Women’s football, tennis, the current rugby world cup or whatever else, it has been thrilling to watch people at the very top of their game compete and achieve. I can get caught up in the thrill of losing in the final as much as anybody else.

The Proms are perhaps a slightly different experience, at least for me. I do understand music. I did conduct ensembles and play the french horn up to university and have always appreciated the best performers over a wide range of the classical tradition. The various national youth orchestras that played during the proms were thrilling, raw enthusiasm matched with outstanding talent all working together as a single unit. And, as always with the Proms, there have been several individual performances that have simply taken my breath away. Again, this is excellence, demonstrated by those at the very top of their profession and that can be recognised by all.

Few of us are going to be ‘excellent’ in this sense, at least not in sport or music (although it is clear that we did have some very talented individuals around the campus in Swansea and it was great to see how we could provide the opportunities they needed to do their very best). Throughout my teaching career, my students have always been very generous in their feedback, regularly rating my teaching as excellent and on various occasions nominating me for awards. Teaching is in my blood (many of my wider family are teachers) and there are few pleasures greater than watching students explore new ideas, grasp difficult concept and begin to think critically and creatively for themselves, often outshining me in the development of their ideas. This is something I missed as a senior leader, but the same kind of thrill can often happen as I watched colleagues and those around me develop and achieve in their own particular field.

Research is much more difficult for me. It does not come naturally. Being dyslexic, writing was something that I have had to work very hard to develop. I had many rejections, false starts, poor reviews etc. as I have tried to improve and to see exactly where I was failing. Excellence in research and publication is not something I can ever take for granted and I have had to work very hard to understand enough of the discussion to be part of it, to communicate what it is that I want to say and to be recognised as one of the leading figures in my own field. Reviewers now tend to comment on the clarity and readability of my writing, which I find very rewarding, and I know that my theories and ideas are being taught in Universities from Melbourne to Stockholm, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, New York, Chicago and San Francisco, to name only those courses that I am aware of. I do believe in excellence, therefore, and do believe that we can, and should, all aim to be excellent in our own chosen field.

Perhaps that does mean that there will always be some mediocre teachers within the University, and some mediocre researchers. These people are almost always excellent at other things; be it student engagement, writing research grants, or whatever else it might be. As with sport or music, while we can, and must, recognise the outstanding talent of the few, we must also recognise that that talent does not exist in isolation. The few that we see performing are often part of a wider team or ensemble, but they are also supported and enabled by a much wider team of technical, scientific, medical, coaching, and management staff who make the individual performance possible. Above all, therefore, it was in recognising the role that we all played, the combined effort, that allowed Swansea University to take pride in the excellence of our staff and our students and to celebrate that excellence whenever we saw it and recognised it.

Paintings of the Post Industrial

A couple of weeks ago I was in Coventry and, having a little time to spare, walked round the Cathedral. It is an incredible building and one of the few twentieth century church buildings that works as a complete whole. It is full of art works, most from the same period as the building of the Cathedral, effectively the 1950s. This is a period of British art that I still find fascinating and captivating.

Last year we travelled up to Newcastle under Lyme to visit the Trent Art Gallery who were holding an exhibition of the paintings of Maurice Wade. Wade trained at Burslem School of Art in the 1930s and returned to the Potteries in the 1950s. He was painting in the second half of the twentieth century and had a series of shows at a gallery in London. He had something of a following in his day but would generally have been considered a minor artist. This exhibition, as far as we know, is the only celebration of his work since the 1970s or 80s. It consisted of the collection of the drummer from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark who, it appears, was something of a fan.

Most of Wade’s mature work is basically in black, white, and various shades of grey. This is not an affectation, that is what he sees. These are images of buildings (chapels, factories, canals) in the Potteries area and the view is primarily black and white. There was one image in the exhibition, that I remember, that shows a pottery next to a canal and some of the slag falling towards the bank, giving a streak of orange in the centre of image, what the description suggested was a ‘riot of colour’. Wade was not interested in painting people. It is the buildings and the landscapes that he paints. The sky and the water are left as blank white canvas, so the first impression is one of silhouette, but the joy and skill of Wade as painter is in the subtlety of tone and depth of texture in his painting, requiring the viewer to get up close and to see the stunning detail that exists within the expanse of black and grey. They are beautiful images, if the post-industrial can ever be described as beautiful.

Wade is just one among a series of post-industrial artists that we have been drawn to over the years, with a significant cluster as my time at Swansea was drawing to a close. I came across a print of John Piper’s image of East Swansea in a gallery in London and was blown away. I have always loved Piper (one of my father’s favourite painters) and associate him more with churches and the rural. However, he spent considerable time in Wales, and it is perhaps not too surprising that he painted Swansea, the terrace houses descending to the bay.

More recently we came across Jack Simcock, another artist from Stoke, in an auction catalogue. This was an image of a cottage on the Staffordshire moors (slightly more colour than Wade, but not a lot, somewhere between Wade and the Welsh artist Kyffin Williams). Just before Easter my partner found a wonderful little oil of the Mancunium Way at night, with the lights reflected in the rain, also in an auction catalogue, and a small painting of two Jewish boys, probably on Cheetham Hill, but equally could have been painted in Jerusalem, we do not really know. Finally, at the Trent Art gallery there were other Simcocks, including an image of pigeon shacks, also in black and white and, like Wade, with wonderful layers of texture.

I guess each urban locality has its own painters of industrial and post-industrial landscapes from the 1950s onwards. It is a world that we are just getting to know despite my love of 1950s art, inherited from my father. These local artists were never very well known, beyond the local aficionados and they are not the ‘star’ artists of their generation. However, the images themselves, the post-industrial landscape, has, as I have already said, a stark beauty all of its own, and it is very much part of the life history of my partner and I. He was born in Longton and moved to Manchester, where we met. I was bought up in South Yorkshire and gravitated towards the declining steel mills of Sheffield. We both knew Manchester in the 1980s and 90s, a period of classic post-industrial decline, and then we moved to Birmingham.

Each locality also, clearly, has its own artists and its own images. My partner is inevitably drawn to the Potteries, and we both have great affection for Manchester. I really don’t know who was painting in and around Sheffield, but there must be images of furnaces and chimneys, not to mention ruin and decline, as there is, in fact, in Swansea. We should perhaps know more about the equivalent group of artists around Birmingham and the Black Country. Again, I have to say that I am just not aware of who was painting in this area.

The attraction, however, is not simply because these paintings are post-industrial, or local, or even of a particular period. As the cliché says, I know what I like, although I also like to discover new things, so it is not so much a case of ‘I like what I know’, but the art of the 1950s is a particular passion, along with the music and literature of the same kind of period (although perhaps also going back into the 1920s and 30s). The is the period of Coventry cathedral, not a period noted for its architecture, but one which has produced some strong examples of early post-industrial building as well as painting and other arts.

Learning from the Chaos of 1919-1923

I have been reading Robert Gerwarth’s The Vanquished on the recommendation of a friend. We had been talking about some of the reading I have done recently focused on the Caucuses and Eastern Turkey and how I had come to realise that my knowledge of what was happening in this part of the world following the end of the First World War was practically non-existent. My friend said that his outlook on much of what happened in Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East, and what is currently happening in Ukraine, had been totally transformed by reading Gerwarth’s book.

I am no expert on this period and have no way of testing Gerwarth’s reading of the events. I probably need to read much more about the period to do that effectively. However, much of what he is recounting, in generally objective terms despite the horrors of the events themselves and the many hundreds of thousands of people (mostly civilians) who were killed, seems convincing and while I am sure there may be other interpretations, both of individual events and of the period as a whole, it is the scope and inclusiveness of this account that I find particularly impressive.

There are, of course, many things to learn and many things that have contemporary resonance. What it takes to lose a war. I was surprised by just how close things still were between the allies and the central powers at the end of 1918, the starvation, the despair of the troops, the gruelling horror of years of trench warfare, and yet when it came, the powers capitulated very quickly, but without troops marching across their lands. The two sides in Ukraine are nowhere near this state just now, for all the horror and all the bloodshed. Neither I would guess are ready to give in, and that might mean many more years of war, many more years of suffering.

I had not realised that the doctrine of ‘self-determination’ was effectively an invention of Woodrow Wilson, the US President who attended the peace talks in Paris. This has had a profound impact as an idea, more in the misuse, or in its failure, rather than in any positive consequences. Following the War the minority nationalities of Eastern Europe had their hopes raised and new nations were formed, mostly through the principle of self-determination. However, none of these new states were ethnically or linguistically uniform. Such mixing occurred under the older Empires that it has taken many decades to come to any kind of stability, and the problems still exist. Most of the old enemies, the central powers, were not, however, allowed self-determination and that led to resentments which built into the Second World War. The wider world, however, beyond Europe had self-determination dangled before them, but were not consider fit enough to benefit from it. The allied powers, and their leaders, particularly Wilson, were deeply racist and could not comprehend how non-Europeans could benefit from self-determination. Finally, we are now about to see, when (or if?) Putin falls, the breakup of the Russian Federation, another round of wars and coups and revolutions, initiated by the idea of self-determination

There were, of course, revolutions, coups, and civil wars in the aftermath of the Great War. Many different militias emerged, peasants, ex-soldiers, desperate aristocracies, workers, any body it seems who might have a grudge. As Gerwarth presents it, however, these groups fall into three camps: the Bolsheviks (the radical left who wanted to nationalise everything and set up workers, or peasants councils to grab land and deprive the bourgeoisie of their privilege); the right, usually referred to as ‘whites’ against the Bolshevik ‘reds’, usually nationalist, ex-military and seeking authority and stability at all costs; and finally there are the liberal democrats, but they hardly get a look in during this story. These groups, especially the left and the right, were willing to use excessive brutality and force to impose their will and incredible cruelty accompanied all the revolutions, coups, and take overs, from whichever side. I can see the collapse of the African states post-independence in much of this, the same grabs for power, the same brutality, and in Congo particularly, the same horror for year after year after year.

I was also not entirely conscious of the link between the Bolsheviks and the Jews, with many of the leaders of the soviet revolutions in Russia, Munich, Hungary and elsewhere being prominent Jews. This does not excuse the antisemitic white terrors. They brutally tortured, raped and murdered Jews wherever they could find them, often using the Bolshevik threat as an excuse, but in no way limiting themselves to Bolshevik sympathisers. At one and the same time the Jews were accused of leading a workers’ revolution and masterminding a capitalist sucking dry of the economy. As Gerwarth notes, the only common ground is the internationalism of the Jewish people over against the narrow nationalism of the right-wing militias. The horror for the Jewish people of eastern Europe had been going on for decades (and probably longer) before the Nazi final solution. I knew this, but I don’t think it had really hit home. What is probably equally horrific is that while the Bolshevik threat is probably dead, or at least sleeping for now – although the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has something of about them that seems very familiar – the right wing, popularist, nationalist threat is undoubtedly growing, and with it the horrors of antisemitism and the irrational hatred of all those who are not ‘of us’.

I think the thing that struck me most forcefully, however, was the way in which Gerwarth integrates everything together and shifts the focus of our attention. We are very used to looking at the world from the top right-hand corner of Europe, perhaps seeing France and Germany, possibly Spain, Italy and Scandinavia, but seldom very much beyond that. This is in part a legacy of the cold war, but it is also a tendency to compartmentalise the world – Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel, etc. – and seeing the problems and issues within each of these, otherwise distinct, spheres. What Gerwarth does so brilliantly is to refocus our attention so much further East, and to reflect on a series of events across both Europe and North Africa which pivot around Turkey and Constantinople. On more than one occasion he suggests that the origins of the First World War occurred in the invasion of Tripoli by the Italians in 1912, followed by the Balkan wars in the next two years, some time before the assassination of the Archduke that is the official spark for the war.

Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire had been declining for many decades, but the First World War sees this Empire collapse, like so many others across Eastern Europe and Russia. What comes next, in Europe and in the Middle East, and even across North Africa, is a consequence of that fall and the disastrous decisions of the victors, in this case Britain and France. We are still living with those consequences. We could even argue, if we draw a horseshoe around the Mediterranean, from Portugal round through Istanbul and Caucasus and on to Morocco and Senegal, that the current coups occurring across the Sahel – Mali, Niger, Chad – are part of this same series of processes. Even the presence of Wagner, supporting these coups, can be traced back to the collapse of all those Empires just over one hundred years ago.

Following the 2015 Consultation on Higher Education and tracking the divides

In November 2015 the UK government published their consultation document, ‘Fulfilling Our Potential, Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’. The subsequent legislation, the introduction of the Office for Students and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), and the response to this from various relevant bodies in Wales were to have a significant impact on my time at Swansea University. On 19th July 2016 the Higher Education and Research Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons with a government majority of 294 votes to 258. This was three days before parliament broke up for the summer recess, and the fact that the government chose to put this through despite all the issues and concerns following the Brexit vote, says something about the importance that they attached to this legislation at the time. It was finally passed into law in April 2017.

One of the most significant questions at the time was whether Universities in England would be allowed to raise their fees. Jo Johnson had already announced what the maximum fee might be for those who would be entitled to raise their fees (£9250, which assumed a 2.8% inflation rate at the time), and all English Universities raised their fees for 2017/18. In Wales there was no raise in fees, as that had become politically impossible after the election of June 2017, although the original decision was put off till after the publication of the Diamond report, which was published in September 2016.

The Higher Education and Research Bill led to one of the most significant shake ups of the Higher Education sector within England and one that has inevitably had important knock-on effects for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Looking at the legislation at the time, I identified two areas that I predicted would lead to growing divisions that have proved to be very difficult to bring back together. Any attempt to do so, especially for a potentially new Labour government following the next election could be particularly complex.

The first of these has been the divide between research and teaching. By transforming HEFCE into an Office for Students and by removing all research elements of HEFCE’s previous role and placing them into a new body proposed in the Nurse Review (Research UK), the legislation separated the two arms of the higher education sector. The subsequent restructuring of departmental responsibilities following Theresa May’s reshuffle in June 2017 entrenched this further, with higher education going in with the Department for Education, while responsibility for science and research stayed with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Jo Johnson, as the minister for Higher Education found himself answerable to two separate Departments.

Despite many further reshuffles, and two or three new governments, this has not changed, and subsequent Secretaries of State have found themselves in a similar, if not worse, state than Jo Johnson. All of us in the sector suffered the same fate, finding our teaching role and our research roles pulling in very different directions under very different scrutiny and expectations. For universities, such as Swansea, that prided themselves on their excellence in both learning and teaching and research, this proved to be particularly difficult.

The other divide that has developed from the legislation is that between the higher education sectors in England, Wales and the other nations. Sitting at the heart of the Higher Education and Research Bill was a mechanism for the expansion of English HEIs and the mechanism for private education providers to attain degree awarding powers and so effectively, to become Universities. Looking at these proposals in detail, and comparing them to the information provided in the Higher Education (Wales) Act 2015, it was immediately apparent that the very definition of what a University is, and the underlying structure of the HE sector in England and Wales were going to diverge considerably. This has only increased in the subsequent years.

I said at the time that ‘the danger is that English and Welsh higher education (and probably post-compulsory education as a whole) will begin to look very different. This is something that we will have to watch very carefully indeed’. This has, of course, happened and since the passing of the Tertiary Education and Research Bill (Wales) Act in September 2022 this divide has become even more embedded. This has not been an unmitigated disaster. Those of us who were in the Welsh sector were very pleased not to be subject to the Office for Students and to retain the QAA as the recognised quality body. However, the divergence in fees has undoubtedly had a very detrimental effect on the HEIs in Wales, especially when compared to their English compatriots.

The real question, however, is how far these divides, originating in the 2017 act are baked in. Is there an argument for trying to turn them around and work more towards bringing research and teaching back into a single framework, or to bring the various national HE sectors across the UK back into alignment? On the first question, I have no doubt that most of those in the sector would like to see more integration of teaching and research, especially at the level of governance at the national level. It has been said by several commentators that if the UK really wants to become a hi-tech superpower, then it is essential to bring these two functions back together and for higher education to be the responsibility of one government department.

The question of the re-alignment of the different national HE sectors, however, is not so clear. Simply bringing Wales and England back towards a common structure or common goals probably does not make sense without also considering Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is perhaps more commonality today among the Celtic nations, at least in values and approach, than any of them have with England. I would not necessarily want to see that disrupted. Likewise, the fees question is much larger than simply realigning England and Wales, although that might be a start. More significantly, however, at least from my limited perspective, is the development in Wales of a post-sixteen sector. This is a radical and positive move and there will undoubtedly be elements of what Wales is pioneering in this area that the other nations will want to learn from. If there is a Labour administration after the next election then I can see this gaining pace, and for this to be just one of a number of initiatives in Wales that might be transferred to England, so bringing a greater alignment once again, but in a very new and distinctive way.