There’s an apocryphal story according to which Zhou Enlai–China’s premier from 1949-76–was supposedly asked about the effects of the French Revolution. “It’s too early to say”, was his response. Leaving aside that the exchange didn’t happen, I think it’s a brilliant sentiment. It also seems on the brink of being extremely applicable. The 1919 Treaty of [...]
“More adjusted than most to his own wants and necessities, and so better able to accommodate other people’s, he was an exemplary person to work with.” -Mary-Kay Wilmers on the late Peter Campbell.
“I would, but it would be dirty.”
OH at Simpsons last night: ”I’m a gentle lover” [followed by awkward silence] OH at lunch today: “If many keys open a door, we say it has a bad lock; if one key opens many doors we call it a master key.” (yes, more than a little metaphorical misogyny there. sigh). OH in microkitchen just now: [...]
I’m reading Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson right now. I’ve been hearing about it since I first applied to Oxford (yes, that was 9 years ago), so I’m a bit shocked that I hadn’t read it before now. I bought it because it was alluded to in something or other I was reading recently. Anyway, I [...]
I’ve been thinking a lot about architecture and tradition lately, and so this quote caught my eye when I was reading Peter Campbell’s LRB review of the John Martin exhibition currently at the Tate Britain. The public, which can no longer look for common standards of taste, high craft and skill, is left interpreting a [...]
I’m trapped in the Dublin airport indefinitely because high winds are stopping my plane from landing. Boo. In the meanwhile, this quote from the LRB (along with a super hot taxi driver) made my day: The other great thing about the Rugby World Cup has been one of the best sport-related tabloid scandals for some [...]
”With the exceptions of the top-lit centrally planned Roman Catholic church of the Holy Rood in Abingdon Road, it is hard to think of a single public building of any distinction in Oxford, outside the University, dating from the first three post-war decades: an indictment all the worse for the fact that these decades saw [...]