‘Race’ or ‘Civilisation’?

Victorian Empire

Lord William Bentinck did not hold office in British imperial service during the reign of Queen Victoria, but the offices he held before she ascended to the throne were significant; he was governor-general of India, the first to hold that office after the Charter Act of 1833 re-organised Indian governance. His attitudes and perspective can thus be seen both to foreshadow Victorian ideas of empire, and also, in places, to diverge dramatically from them. When Bentinck departed Britain for his first role in colonial administration, the governorship of Madras, which he occupied at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he expressed Enlightenment values pertaining to the universality of human nature: ‘Is not human nature everywhere the same?’ This belief was stiffly expressed but sincerely held.

A University Leaves Budapest

After legal and political drama seemingly spanning years, a final move has been made in Hungry, as the Central European University (CEU) prepares to leave the country.

The university has been under threat for a while, actively targeted by the government of Viktor Orban, including the recent passage of a law designed to make the operation of foreign-run universities a more bureaucratically challenging enterprise.

Missing Man: On William Gerhardie

This is a story of one thing leading to another.

My parents set the foundations for everything I have read. From my mother, books about history and poetry; from my father, an introduction to contemporary novels. In the latter category, amid Amis, McEwan and Faulks, one cannot escape William Boyd.

Hot Water and Higher Education

There’s meant to be something somewhat seedy about the profit motive. Perhaps this is why, in the case of education, many of us recoil in horror as soon as the prospect is introduced. This is an irrational response, but it’s not entirely unreasonable. Education is something which makes politicians misty-eyed. It makes their voices quaver. Our leaders describe with great emotion the need for the next generation to do better, to have more, to go without less.

More Than a Social Animal

Review – John Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth Scurr

An Enemy of Promise

Review – Any Human Heart by William Boyd

I approached this novel with some trepidation. It had been reviewed well enough; and those of my friends and relatives who had read it all agreed that it was excellent. I suppose my reluctance stemmed from a sense that the journal format is a fairly tired and stale one, and that it can make good novelists produce frankly inferior stuff for no other reason, it seems to me, than the pursuit of narrative ease. It’s tough to be original if the events of every day are conveyed in under 250 words and always begin with ‘Dear diary’.