All in a Don's Day (23 page)

Let's assume two things. One (this is fairly likely): that Saif had written to Blair asking him to read his work and also asking for a bit of help. Two (rather less likely – but you never know): that any graduate student who wrote to Number 10 asking for some help with their thesis would get the backroom boys and girls finding them some good examples for their doctorate.

On those assumptions, my reaction is that Blair and his team hadn't learned the lesson that most academics quickly learn, who tend to be deluged with requests by people (from novelists and doctoral students to primary school kids writing a project) asking them to read their work, and/or to give a bibliography, or to ‘tell me what you know about'.

It's always a tricky one, but you begin to get a nose for a right answer.

You are weighing up (in my case at least) two considerations that pull in very different ways. On the one hand, I think that I have a duty to the subject and to helping people find out about it. If a kid who seems to have got enthused about ancient Greece and wants a bit of advice about how to take that further, surely you should help. At the same time, if a Masters or doctoral student at some other university is working on a subject that is part of your ‘territory', then I think that there is a presumption that you should be interested in them and give a hand (and I think I have a pretty good record at that).

But if I read everything I was asked to, and gave a full bibliography to everyone who emailed in for one, I wouldn't have any time for any of my own work at all. And just occasionally I get the feeling that I am being a bit ‘used' – whether to compensate for someone who is not doing their supervisory job elsewhere (and whose university is taking the fat fee) or to be an innocent weapon in some battle between a student and their long suffering supervisor (‘Mary Beard said …'), or just to save the person's time of half-an-hour Googling. And sometimes I get the feeling that the innocent inquirer has actually written round to half the Classical world asking for a bibliography on gladiators or whatever. (Those I guess are the ones who can't be bothered to send an email to thank you, even though they could be bothered to email you to ask you the question.)

So I have a variety of strategies, while still trying to be helpful. I sometimes ask how many people have they sent the ‘I am doing a project on Roman London … ' email to. Sometimes I suggest they start with their own teacher, then come to me. Sometimes I ask what they have already done to find out about the subject. This doesn't work badly, and
actually I have made some good friends this way. As I say, you get a nose for it, and for how to help those who need/deserve the help – while not being a complete mug and spending an hour assembling the information that they could have done themselves. The same goes with requests for how to visit Pompeii … it's great when you have some feedback and people tell you about how it worked (or not); when you give a load of advice about places, sites, transport and hotels, and you don't even get an acknowledgement, AAGGGHHH.

So what should Blair have done? Well, my hunch is that he should have written back, suggesting that Saif's supervisor at LSE was the best resource on this. (He or his staff ought to have wanted to get a scent if there was a problem here – there clearly was.) Anyway, sending off some half-relevant example never really helps anyone; that's not what a PhD is about really.

And he (or his staff) should NEVER have sort of implied that he had read the work sent in by Saif when he hadn't.

Any academic would have told him that trouble always comes that way – as indeed it has in this case.

I′m pretty sure that the reason he showed it to Blair was that he expected the Prime Minister to call up the LSE and quietly tell them that they′d better give him a PhD or else …

After all, isn′t that the way things were done in Libya?

MARKS

Just as amusing as requests for assistance are supposed answers to long-standing problems, discoveries of the key to the Universe, claims of royal blood and entitlement to the kingdom and so on.

Littlewood, in
A Mathematician′s Miscellany
(p. 43 of the 1953 edition), tells the following story:

Landau kept a printed form for dealing with proofs of Fermat′s last theorem. ′On page blank, lines blank to blank, you will find there is a mistake′. (Finding the mistake fell to the Privat Dozent.)

RICHARD BARON

16 September 2011

Melbourn Village College – not far from Cambridge – has decided to ditch its Latin motto: ‘Nisi dominus frustra'. And I guess you can see why. It's a contraction of the first line of Psalm 127, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain' … so you might translate the three Latin words of the motto something like ‘Without the Lord, frustration', I guess. A touch pious you might think, and a bit Judaeo-Christian. But I can't see that any world faith could seriously disagree and, anyway, it's served the city of Edinburgh well enough for the last few hundred years.

They have replaced it (after a student vote, it seems) with what sounds to me more like an advertising jingle: ‘Inspiring Minds' (which is bound to look ‘so 2011' in a few years time that it too will soon be ditched). According to the Acting Principal, they wanted a motto that was more relevant to the students. In the current economic climate, Latin was ‘largely irrelevant' in helping the students find work.

Never mind the dodgy logic and/or facts here. (Every study I have seen suggests that Latin has a rather good track record in employment – but even if it didn't, we surely don't think that school is all about jobs: what about EDUCATION?) More to the point is the question of what we think mottoes are for.

I've never been much of a fan of obscuring stupid ideas under a veil of Latin (as if translating stupidity into a ‘dead' language suddenly made it clever). But I do think mottoes are best when they are a bit mystical, a tiny bit puzzling (which is presumably why Latin mottoes are a favourite of football clubs).
I would have thought that enterprising teaching could easily use ‘Nisi dominus frustra' to make something that was fascinating and life-enhancing for the kids. It would take you, for a start, into the Psalms (which, Judaeo-Christian or not, are an important part of world culture), and it would take you to the history of Edinburgh (which, as a city, wouldn't be too bad a role model for a school).

But the real problem is that – to judge from its website – Melbourn Village College doesn't actually teach Latin, which must be one reason why the students found the phrase irrelevant. (To be fair, they have a good range of Modern Languages and most students study two, at least for a bit; which must make the school a bit of a beacon in that department.)

I wonder if any of the teachers explained the motto and its history to the kids before they voted to ditch it. And I wonder if the Acting Principal considered the possibility of dealing with the apparent irrelevance by (re-)introducing Latin into the curriculum.

That might have opened up even more exciting educational horizons to their students.

Once, on an OFSTED inspection, a pupil told me that he hadn′t a clue what the school motto meant and that if they′d wanted him to know they wouldn′t have written it in a foreign language. (It was in Latin.)

GEOFFREY WALKER

I must say a motto that suggests you have to believe in the Lord in order for your labours to be fruitful is not a motto I would want for myself or my child′s school. Very depressing if you are not of the tribe.

STROPPY AUTHOR

But the motto and the full text it′s extracted from say nothing about believing in the Lord; only about collaborating with Him. A belief in His existence is, of course, implied. But that′s no reason for an atheist to take offence. Each to his own metaphysical assumptions.

PL

Our school motto was ′Fidei coticula crux′ (it was run by a Catholic teaching order). But not even the Latin masters knew what it meant. The sticking point was ′coticula′. Someone once suggested that it meant ′touchstone′, which I believe was correct, but as no one knew what a touchstone was, it didn′t help much.

Now, long after the event, I suppose it means ′The Cross is the test of faith′, which is a good religious motto, but doesn′t seem appropriate to a school that I rather enjoyed than otherwise.

But what is a motto for? Oxford′s ′Dominus llluminatio mea′ was probably meaningful when invented: ′The Lord enlightens my mind′ or some such; especially if you think of Grosseteste discoursing on light, but nowadays rather begs the question of which Dominus, and whether there is a Dominus at all.

DAVID KIRWAN

How about a return
ad fontes
with:

(if that′s correct)?

PL

Nisi Dominus frustra is the motto of St John′s College, University of Sydney. As acting Rector, after nights of riotous student behaviour, I often fantasised about reducing the motto to FRUSTRA.

CF

19 September 2011

When I was curator of the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge, I used to be terribly ambivalent about film crews wanting to come and use the Museum as a location. (It's a great one, by the way.) On the one hand, it was wonderful publicity for what we had to offer: a free advert, really. On the other, it was always a total pain in the neck. The crew would turn up with mind-boggling amounts of equipment, they completely disrupted the place for any other visitor – and they always, just always, went on for longer than they said they would. I tried adding on penalty payments for every 15 minutes over the agreed time, but even that didn't work (though it did bring in more cash).

Now the boot is on the other foot. I'm in Italy filming a documentary series on ancient Rome, and I have become one of those villains I used to find so infuriating – with all that stuff, getting in everyone's way and sometimes, I confess, going on too long. A salutary lesson, I guess. I have come to see why it is so hard to be a ‘well-behaved' film crew.

The timing really is extremely tight and disconcertingly unpredictable. Even if you have recce'd every location pretty carefully, you still can't be prepared for everything: the fact that it is a rainy day and very dark and you have to light the place, or a man is digging up the road with a pneumatic drill right outside (and it takes half an hour to persuade him just to take a five-minute break), or the air force has chosen to practise its tricks overhead, or your presenter (that's me) keeps fluffing her lines.

I don't really mean ‘lines', as there is isn't a written script as such. We know the basic points we want to make at each location, but I do it extempore to camera each time.

You couldn't really do otherwise if you want to make it fresh and good and well targeted. Actually being in the place suggests new connections and new emphases in what you should be saying. But it's horribly easy to get it wrong first time, or even second time … not to say third.

Sometimes that's a matter of tone (too breezy, or not breezy enough). Sometimes it's a question of just getting bogged down in some not very relevant detail – or realising that you just forgot the wonderful example that you meant to put in. Sometimes you have to take 15 minutes to check a fact that you hadn't realised you needed. I'm travelling with a mini reference library, plus access to JSTOR in the evening – but thank God for Google on a smartphone during the day, which is great when you have had a sudden crisis of confidence about the exact meaning of a Latin word (the brilliant Perseus website gives you Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary on-line) or suddenly blank on the date of the death of Trajan. (No, I don't trust Wiki!)

Making a slip in a lecture is bad enough, but you can always put it right the next time – you can even make it slightly endearing on the ‘Homer nods' principle. If you make an error in front of a few million (let's hope) viewers, that's more seriously humiliating, to say the least. (And just think of the number of emails you'd get.)