Extract from Advice to Clever Children , about the modern obsession with qualifications. T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) In the University of Ox...

Oriel College’s Rhodes Building, with statue of Cecil Rhodes Speaking at the ceremony to swear in Professor Louise Richardson as [Oxford...

In 2007, someone commented, on my colleague Dr Fabian Wadel’s blog , about one of my books which they had bought, and its apparent history: ...

EEG waves People on the outside of the Oxford academic world imagine that it is far more objective than it actually is. People who get r...

Iris Murdoch I had got to know J.B. Priestley through Mary Adams of the BBC, and after trying to make use of me to collect quotations for...

Margaret Eastman was an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford, with a scholarship in classics. This fairly clearly implied exceptiona...

Researchers found that many parents ‘overvalue’ their children and believe them to be more special and entitled than others. These parents...

text of a letter to an academic I remember that you once asked me why schools, even the Ursuline convent school, wanted me to do maths in ...

Further to my post No need to be ‘committed’ , there is much more that should be said about the impossibility of getting a supporter for: (...

Below is an extract from a letter to someone who said, in connection with our need to obtain a senior supporter, that it would have to be so...

edited text of a letter to an academic There has recently been some more interest in near-death experiences, including a large number of h...

Recently I wrote about Charles McCreery’s ability to pick out which reports of ostensibly religious experiences had been written by someone...

A year ago I applied for the University of Oxford’s recently created Professorship of Science and Religion. This was set up to investigate ...

I propose that a fund be set up in memory of the late Baroness Thatcher, provisionally entitled the Margaret Thatcher Memorial Fund for Acad...

Further on the topic of the late Lady Thatcher and the former Principal of Somerville College, Dame Janet Vaughan , this is an extract from ...

I was disgusted, although of course in a familiar way, to hear recently that someone is receiving a grant (from the Perrott-Warwick Fund, ad...

There follows an extract from a review in the Daily Mail by Quentin Letts of the book The Real Iron Lady: Working With Mrs Thatcher by Gil...

text of a letter You said that you found our questionnaire on out-of-the-body experiences (OBEs) ‘inspirational’. Please do not imagine th...

‘Near-death experiences’, which have become a staple of popular journalism, were never heard of (or at least I had never heard of them) unti...

In December I applied for a professorship in education offered by Oxford University. The text of the covering letter was reproduced here . ...