1 00:00:15,170 --> 00:00:17,660 Good evening and welcome to Big Tent. 2 00:00:17,660 --> 00:00:23,840 Live events are live online event series from the University of Oxford as part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, 3 00:00:23,840 --> 00:00:28,670 one of the founding Stones for the future, Stephen Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. 4 00:00:28,670 --> 00:00:33,380 My name is Regulus will know as well as Williams, and I'm the director here at Torch. 5 00:00:33,380 --> 00:00:38,210 We bring you this event online and hope that you remain safe and well. 6 00:00:38,210 --> 00:00:40,040 Everyone is welcome in our big tent. 7 00:00:40,040 --> 00:00:47,120 As we explore big ideas together here, I'd like to remind you that you can submit questions and comments for our speakers. 8 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:55,200 Please type these into the YouTube live chat below and we'll answer as many as possible later in the session when I come back tonight, 9 00:00:55,200 --> 00:00:59,540 then we're delighted to bring you this discussion of this book, 10 00:00:59,540 --> 00:01:06,140 Under the Rainbow Voices from Lock Down and the discussion with the author, James Akeley, 11 00:01:06,140 --> 00:01:11,330 who will introduce in a moment the event we're doing in collaboration with Blackwells of Oxford. 12 00:01:11,330 --> 00:01:16,550 And if you want your own signed copy of this book, you look on the website where you've got the phone number for Blackwells. 13 00:01:16,550 --> 00:01:20,390 They will a send it to you if you live outside Oxford. 14 00:01:20,390 --> 00:01:27,470 If not, then they will even bring it to you by bike if long as you live within the Oxford ringroad. 15 00:01:27,470 --> 00:01:33,620 Otherwise you can place an order online at Blackwells Dakoda UK. 16 00:01:33,620 --> 00:01:41,770 James, then I have first of all, then the honour of introducing James Atley, who I hope will come to your screen in a minute. 17 00:01:41,770 --> 00:01:46,630 James Antley is the author of Under the Rainbow. Hello, James. 18 00:01:46,630 --> 00:01:52,930 Voices from Lockdown. He's also written Isolation at Different Oxford Journey Guernica, 19 00:01:52,930 --> 00:01:59,980 painting the end of the World Station to station when he was the what was a writer in residence on the Great Western Railway. 20 00:01:59,980 --> 00:02:07,330 If I remember rightly, that book was shortlisted for the Stanford Billman Travel Book of the Year 2017. 21 00:02:07,330 --> 00:02:12,190 He's also written Nocturne A Journey in Search of Moonlight, amongst other titles. 22 00:02:12,190 --> 00:02:18,310 Is Digital Fiction The Cartographer's Confession one. The 2017 New Media Writing Prise. 23 00:02:18,310 --> 00:02:26,320 He works as an editor, lecturer and publishing consultant, and his journalism has appeared in publications including The Independent State, etc. 24 00:02:26,320 --> 00:02:29,990 Free's and The London Review of Books. Welcome, James. 25 00:02:29,990 --> 00:02:42,270 It's very nice to have you here in the big tent. I'm also delighted to welcome Marina Warner this evening, I went to a marina, comes on screen. 26 00:02:42,270 --> 00:02:50,010 Hello, Marina. Marina, who is an acclaimed polymath, a writer of fiction, criticism, history and geography. 27 00:02:50,010 --> 00:02:56,310 Her works include novels, short stories, as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairy tales. 28 00:02:56,310 --> 00:03:00,270 And certainly in my working life, she's been an inspiration in many ways. 29 00:03:00,270 --> 00:03:05,970 She's written for many publications from the London Review of Books through to The New Statesman and to Vogue, 30 00:03:05,970 --> 00:03:13,170 and is a distinguished fellow of All Souls, Oxford. Not many people have managed to combine those two qualities. 31 00:03:13,170 --> 00:03:19,590 Welcome, Marina. Thank you. And last but no means least, we welcome Professor Pablo Mukerji again. 32 00:03:19,590 --> 00:03:30,100 I'll wait till Pablo comes to the screen. Professor Pablo Mukerji teaches on the English and Comparative Literature Studies programme 33 00:03:30,100 --> 00:03:35,020 at Warwick University and is an expert on Victorian as well as contemporary imperial, 34 00:03:35,020 --> 00:03:46,300 colonial and imperial colonial cultures. He's got a good degree of expertise then in Victorian and indeed some degree of contemporary writing. 35 00:03:46,300 --> 00:03:54,100 He also happens to live in Oxford and so has some thoughts to bring to our discussion around this book, 36 00:03:54,100 --> 00:03:59,080 which, as readers will know, is partly based in Oxford, but not only about Oxford. 37 00:03:59,080 --> 00:04:05,560 And that, I daresay, is one of the things we'll be discussing in the course of today's conversation. 38 00:04:05,560 --> 00:04:09,700 Welcome, Pablo, and thank you for joining us this evening. 39 00:04:09,700 --> 00:04:16,600 I'm now going to disappear from the scrolls whilst the three of our speakers, our guests have a discussion. 40 00:04:16,600 --> 00:04:23,410 I think we're going to start really with a discussion between Marina and James and then move on to more of a discussion between James and Pablo. 41 00:04:23,410 --> 00:04:30,870 But then I'll stay present and then I will join you again later on in about half an hour or so to try and 42 00:04:30,870 --> 00:04:36,640 intimate things between all three of you and also to bring in that stage questions from the audience. 43 00:04:36,640 --> 00:04:40,660 So before you go. Oh, I'm very sorry. You're quite right. 44 00:04:40,660 --> 00:04:43,360 I forgotten about this, really. Thank you very much, James. 45 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:51,070 So one of the great things about this book is, apart from the writing, is that there are some really lovely and not just lovely, 46 00:04:51,070 --> 00:04:59,770 but kind of challenging, interesting rich photographs and images in here. 47 00:04:59,770 --> 00:05:04,780 So Mayor is going to show us a few of them. It's about rainbows in windows. 48 00:05:04,780 --> 00:05:08,810 And so here then are one or two photographs. 49 00:05:08,810 --> 00:05:15,210 Thank you. So this one combining the rainbow with a Black Lives Matter image. 50 00:05:15,210 --> 00:05:20,870 And this is a rainbow with an England football flag. 51 00:05:20,870 --> 00:05:26,750 And here's the Rainbow Rocket, I think it's not the wrong way round, should that, in fact, be a door going upwards, James? 52 00:05:26,750 --> 00:05:34,730 Yes. OK, well, there we are. Sideways rocket for now. And we can imagine it going the other way. 53 00:05:34,730 --> 00:05:36,530 Thank you for reminding me. 54 00:05:36,530 --> 00:05:44,330 And at that stage, I really will disappear and leave you guys to get on with the conversation and look forward to listening and joining in later. 55 00:05:44,330 --> 00:05:56,000 Thank you. Yes, so I think Wes wanted me to begin by just reading a short extract, 56 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:07,250 so this is taken from close to the beginning of the book when I'm first venturing out into the city, exploring, 57 00:06:07,250 --> 00:06:13,470 exploring it and using the art in people's windows as an excuse to ring their doorbells and try 58 00:06:13,470 --> 00:06:20,870 and start a conversation back on the bike up the hill that always gets the heart going slow. 59 00:06:20,870 --> 00:06:28,700 Down on the street of Edwardian terraces, I knock on the door next to a window decorated with a handwritten rainbow. 60 00:06:28,700 --> 00:06:33,830 It's opened by a woman, a girl of five or six, peering out from behind her. 61 00:06:33,830 --> 00:06:38,480 I ask who did the picture and why. Oh, my daughter, the woman says. 62 00:06:38,480 --> 00:06:41,960 Then to the girl, Do you want to tell the man why you did it? 63 00:06:41,960 --> 00:06:50,240 The girl picks up her mother's dress and hides her face in it because he told me to, she says in a muffled voice. 64 00:06:50,240 --> 00:06:57,530 This, it turns out, is a recurrent theme. A serious faced man opens the door a little further along. 65 00:06:57,530 --> 00:07:02,780 His children are there somewhere in the background, but they're not invited to join our conversation. 66 00:07:02,780 --> 00:07:06,630 Why did his family create the artwork in their window? 67 00:07:06,630 --> 00:07:13,800 It was a way of being able to express support to health workers and also an activity that got the children involved stop them getting bored, 68 00:07:13,800 --> 00:07:21,000 he tells me. So partly it was for something to do, but also said the children would understand the impact of the crisis, 69 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:26,560 appreciate what the health workers are doing, having they have a sense of what's at stake. 70 00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:33,790 No danger that education is on hold in this house during lock down the Rainbow artwork's suddenly feel less spontaneous, 71 00:07:33,790 --> 00:07:36,610 more a task that has been set. 72 00:07:36,610 --> 00:07:46,930 I move on through sunbake, streets I know would have been decorated with artworks just two months ago, but are now a gallery scrubbed clean. 73 00:07:46,930 --> 00:07:53,080 Builders are busy on scaffolding, fixing roofs, giving houses a post pandemic paint job, 74 00:07:53,080 --> 00:08:01,240 their conversations providing a quazi divine commentary from above gruff Carabine in a Renaissance painting. 75 00:08:01,240 --> 00:08:05,500 I've developed a cycling technique that involves pedalling slowly while moving 76 00:08:05,500 --> 00:08:11,080 my head from side to side to scan each property from behind dark glasses. 77 00:08:11,080 --> 00:08:16,870 It provokes some suspicious looks for understandable reasons. 78 00:08:16,870 --> 00:08:18,940 Thank you so much, James. 79 00:08:18,940 --> 00:08:27,070 I must say, I feel that you've written in a very provocative book, absolutely full of thought about the current crisis we're in. 80 00:08:27,070 --> 00:08:32,290 But we're in a very perceptive book with infinite paths of attention. 81 00:08:32,290 --> 00:08:40,990 The quality of attention and listening that you show to your interlocutors and to the sum of many of them strangers to you is very, 82 00:08:40,990 --> 00:08:46,330 very striking in the book. But as you mentioned there, you people could have been suspicious. 83 00:08:46,330 --> 00:08:53,500 So I'm interested about your you know, your method, because it seems to me that you're in a literary tradition, 84 00:08:53,500 --> 00:08:55,720 even though you're not being self-conscious about it. 85 00:08:55,720 --> 00:09:05,380 But you're in a literary tradition which runs definitely back to Orwell, at least, of documentary witness testimony, 86 00:09:05,380 --> 00:09:13,630 gathering voices, but also a kind of situationist situation, situationist attitude of the chance encounter. 87 00:09:13,630 --> 00:09:20,050 The and I'm amazed you didn't have more trouble, as it were, as you charged into people's lives. 88 00:09:20,050 --> 00:09:31,210 I kind of I reckon sometimes I had about five seconds when someone opened the door to engage with them. 89 00:09:31,210 --> 00:09:40,030 And quite often children played a role in getting me past that initial suspicion. 90 00:09:40,030 --> 00:09:45,790 I mean, because, let's face it, when people strangers ring your doorbell, they could be coming for the rent. 91 00:09:45,790 --> 00:09:50,050 They could be causing trouble. They could be anybody, you know. 92 00:09:50,050 --> 00:09:55,390 And so I had did have one, you know, one or two occasions where someone would open the door and sort of say what you want, 93 00:09:55,390 --> 00:10:02,320 you know, in quite an aggressive way. And if I was able to say, well, I just saw that beautiful rainbow in your window and I wondered how you did it, 94 00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:12,580 then they'd say, Oh, that's my son, I'll get it for you. And the children have this kind of magical role in defusing suspicion. 95 00:10:12,580 --> 00:10:17,690 Yeah, but as you say, I think probably what I've. 96 00:10:17,690 --> 00:10:28,130 Learnt, if anything, from the situation is that thing of being open to chance and to being sensitive to the kind 97 00:10:28,130 --> 00:10:36,330 of psychic atmosphere of different parts of the city and being alert for that sort of. 98 00:10:36,330 --> 00:10:44,190 What somebody called the dog whistle of chance, you know, that would just make you think, oh, I'll just go down that street, I'll just turn here. 99 00:10:44,190 --> 00:10:46,050 And there was a sense of urgency, 100 00:10:46,050 --> 00:10:55,290 as I tried to explain in that extract that a lot of people were taking the art down by the river because it was feeding their children, 101 00:10:55,290 --> 00:10:59,370 have moved on to other things and so on. Yeah. 102 00:10:59,370 --> 00:11:08,450 So I think. I'm sure I've learnt a lot from the situations, but it's all just part of my DNA now, you know, after a long time. 103 00:11:08,450 --> 00:11:19,850 But I think just through doing a number of books where I've kind of wandered about and spoken to people and met people, 104 00:11:19,850 --> 00:11:24,650 I just when I go into the zone, I'm I just feel very relaxed. 105 00:11:24,650 --> 00:11:31,310 And I think people read your body language and they know it was almost as if they've been waiting for me, 106 00:11:31,310 --> 00:11:35,870 some of these people that a lot of pent up emotion, things they wanted to say. 107 00:11:35,870 --> 00:11:41,690 And it was almost as if I was the recycling guy is coming to pick up the recycling. 108 00:11:41,690 --> 00:11:45,800 You know, here's the story. Collecting, you know, a big one. 109 00:11:45,800 --> 00:11:50,900 Quite understood the idea. Yes. You want to hear our stories about this strange time? 110 00:11:50,900 --> 00:11:55,970 Yes. I think that you catch that very well with your finger very much on that pulse. 111 00:11:55,970 --> 00:12:00,390 The people are cooped up that they haven't been allowed to touch or see other people. 112 00:12:00,390 --> 00:12:04,730 Suddenly they're allowed to speak. But you have a very vivid cast of characters. 113 00:12:04,730 --> 00:12:08,120 And I wondered if you did actually consciously think I must do this. 114 00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:13,010 I must cover that. I must. You have a very vigorous landlady pub landlady. 115 00:12:13,010 --> 00:12:19,580 You have the supermarket attendant, you have many medical people. 116 00:12:19,580 --> 00:12:23,990 Several ages of children is a marvellous gallery. 117 00:12:23,990 --> 00:12:27,770 Well, not I shouldn't say gallery are marvellous actual chorus voices. 118 00:12:27,770 --> 00:12:33,470 And that reminded me of a very great contemporary writer who is Svetlana Alexievich. 119 00:12:33,470 --> 00:12:41,030 And your book has something in common with her book Conscionable, which is called Chernobyl Prayer, 120 00:12:41,030 --> 00:12:47,210 in which she gathers these voices of people who have lived through that. Of course, we're still living through the voters. 121 00:12:47,210 --> 00:12:56,090 So, yeah, we are. I mean, it was as you sort of, I think guessed it was a mixture of chance encounters. 122 00:12:56,090 --> 00:13:07,780 And then we think it would be great to find someone, you know, a nurse, for instance, who could really tell me. 123 00:13:07,780 --> 00:13:25,530 You know what she experienced during the first lockdown and you know, when I heard that somebody knew somebody whose parents moment was. 124 00:13:25,530 --> 00:13:26,940 Infected with Kofod, really, 125 00:13:26,940 --> 00:13:38,100 because somebody had been released from hospital with it on the very day that supposedly a ring had been pushed around by care homes, 126 00:13:38,100 --> 00:13:47,760 they found out that actually the hospital was have been told to send people back, appears in the book from her testimony. 127 00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:56,670 So. I of course, I did seek out particular people, and I also have many conversations that don't appear in the book because they were too like others. 128 00:13:56,670 --> 00:14:03,060 So they were unremarkable, you know, so it's a mixture of those those things. 129 00:14:03,060 --> 00:14:16,240 And I did sort of feel. A bit like sort of Studs Terkel lugging a big, great big kind of reel to reel tape recorder around Chicago, 130 00:14:16,240 --> 00:14:23,350 and I felt quite grateful that now you can just float like a leaf on the current with a with an iPhone and you've got it covered. 131 00:14:23,350 --> 00:14:30,160 And then, of course, the thread that you so wonderfully noted is the symbol of the rainbow. 132 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:36,310 And you treat it very with great respect. Every artefact you treat with great respect. 133 00:14:36,310 --> 00:14:45,100 And you actually unfold a story very unexpectedly to me of the changing meanings in real time of a symbol. 134 00:14:45,100 --> 00:14:55,840 Yes, I. I did kind of think, where the [INAUDIBLE] did all these rainbows come from, you know, and. 135 00:14:55,840 --> 00:15:07,450 It appears that the symbol first appeared in Italy during lockdown, together with the phrase and Andrew Tutto Bene. 136 00:15:07,450 --> 00:15:16,610 Everything's going to be all right. But also one has to remember that Italy is the sort of power centre of Catholicism. 137 00:15:16,610 --> 00:15:33,210 So inevitably, the rainbow symbol is is inflected also with the biblical overtones of the rainbow during those flood and. 138 00:15:33,210 --> 00:15:40,890 Of course, on that occasion, God told Noah that he was going to destroy all living things on Earth, 139 00:15:40,890 --> 00:15:45,240 and I know we should get on board the boat that he built together with his family 140 00:15:45,240 --> 00:15:49,380 and two of every living thing and just wait for the destruction of everything, 141 00:15:49,380 --> 00:15:59,070 everything else. And at the end of the flood, the rainbow appears as a promise, like, OK, you've got free that I'm never going to do that again. 142 00:15:59,070 --> 00:16:04,440 So in that way, it's the Rainbow posters. 143 00:16:04,440 --> 00:16:12,600 I think initially you were saying, like, if we get through this global catastrophe, that's like a great flood, everything will be fine again. 144 00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:16,800 So it came then to Spain and then it came to England. 145 00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:27,810 And to start with again, it had just this simple, positive message to it, but it quickly became symbolic of the NHS. 146 00:16:27,810 --> 00:16:40,020 And I wondered how that had happened. And I traced that back to 2018 when a report came out that said that a lot of LGBTQ people 147 00:16:40,020 --> 00:16:47,790 had experienced prejudice when getting help from the NHS and a particular hospital, 148 00:16:47,790 --> 00:16:49,470 the London Children's Hospital, 149 00:16:49,470 --> 00:16:59,100 the Avellino hospital decided to make rainbow badges for their staff to show their hospital was an inclusive, safe space for everybody. 150 00:16:59,100 --> 00:17:05,160 And that spread throughout the NHS. The health secretary took to wearing one in his lapel. 151 00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:09,930 And so in that, in the minds of the public, I think the two symbols got conflated. 152 00:17:09,930 --> 00:17:15,840 But of course, that rainbow badge was a symbol of pride, you know, 153 00:17:15,840 --> 00:17:24,450 and knowingly used in that way by the NHS to start with and of gay, you know, gay pride and so I speak. 154 00:17:24,450 --> 00:17:33,500 I have a good conversation with with an artist who who explains how the community felt. 155 00:17:33,500 --> 00:17:41,000 So as though the symbol have been stolen from them without permission and changed into something else and even used for government propaganda. 156 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:47,480 So that was really the story of its mutation in real time before our eyes, as it was to be fascinating, 157 00:17:47,480 --> 00:17:53,120 but also very perceptively remarks that it became children putting it up. 158 00:17:53,120 --> 00:18:00,590 We're actually putting it up as a protective symbol. It becomes rather like the hand of Fátima or the eye against the evil eye. 159 00:18:00,590 --> 00:18:09,680 Exactly. Often if I rang the doorbell and an older person might emerge a sort of grandparents figure, 160 00:18:09,680 --> 00:18:14,930 and it would turn out that the child had sent them that because they were no longer allowed to visit. 161 00:18:14,930 --> 00:18:21,140 So they would send rainbows through the post or pop through the door or whatever. 162 00:18:21,140 --> 00:18:28,700 And it was to protect that loved person and to prevent the plague from entering the building, as it were. 163 00:18:28,700 --> 00:18:38,840 So again, I was reminded of the hand prints that are found in caves where children have 164 00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:43,580 apparently been lifted up to place their handprints high up on the walls of caves. 165 00:18:43,580 --> 00:18:48,680 And these are not just children being entertained during a lockdown. 166 00:18:48,680 --> 00:18:54,980 The children that are invested with kind of power by the tribe and they have a role. 167 00:18:54,980 --> 00:19:06,500 And I think children did have a very big role during lockdown and families in an unaccustomed way lived together for for a long period of time. 168 00:19:06,500 --> 00:19:12,680 You have another theme, which is very, very interesting. I know Pablo wants to come in on this, but I just ask you one thing. 169 00:19:12,680 --> 00:19:17,210 First is that these messages are, as you've just said, personal messages. 170 00:19:17,210 --> 00:19:23,990 Yes. This is a card sent to to a granny, but the granny doesn't usually put a birthday card in the window. 171 00:19:23,990 --> 00:19:32,540 So this is a way of speaking from the private sphere, the domestic sphere where we were all locked in to into the street. 172 00:19:32,540 --> 00:19:42,200 And you then relate the rainbow, these rainbow messages to the whole history of graffiti and protest banners 173 00:19:42,200 --> 00:19:49,840 and making a statement in the free the still free area of the public forum. 174 00:19:49,840 --> 00:19:58,340 I mean, things were happening in the world. The boycott, the cancellation of world. 175 00:19:58,340 --> 00:20:01,900 You know, Earth Day, yeah, 176 00:20:01,900 --> 00:20:13,400 so people had a lot of concerns and also about the way the pandemic was being handled and they couldn't meet with people face to face. 177 00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:23,140 So this was a way it was like going an alternative to social media where we're all talking to our own bubble, as it were. 178 00:20:23,140 --> 00:20:29,080 People were putting them in the window and making a statement of their position to the streets. 179 00:20:29,080 --> 00:20:38,260 It might be a statement of solidarity or protest or whatever and other messages were, I think, sort of wrapped up in these rainbows. 180 00:20:38,260 --> 00:20:41,980 So, Pablo, I think over to you. Yeah. Thanks, Marina. 181 00:20:41,980 --> 00:20:46,930 And thank you for for raising that point about what I was going to tell James is this 182 00:20:46,930 --> 00:20:51,040 is obviously a very intimate book for me to read because I walk the same streets. 183 00:20:51,040 --> 00:20:58,630 Sometimes I go to the same pubs. I can name many of James's characters by name, which I won't do at this moment. 184 00:20:58,630 --> 00:21:08,260 But I want to I really loved what I loved about the book was the Segway, as James has oftentimes from a very intimate local Oxford setting. 185 00:21:08,260 --> 00:21:20,440 And then he would he will widen the scope and really allow us to see Oxford as as both the both a very English city, but also world city in some ways, 186 00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:31,000 which is appropriate in writing about pandemic, of course, which is a global phenomenon, as well as having a specific English form. 187 00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:37,960 I wanted to start by asking James about one such moment when he's with his friend Darren by the river and he 188 00:21:37,960 --> 00:21:44,950 sees that is he's one of those little houseboats party boats go by and then there's a switch in register. 189 00:21:44,950 --> 00:21:52,150 And then he suddenly recalls Conrad as he looks at the river and he says he thinks of that famous opening lines, 190 00:21:52,150 --> 00:21:57,070 opening moments in the heart of darkness. This, too, has been a place of darkness. 191 00:21:57,070 --> 00:22:03,610 And I wanted to ask James about what he was thinking in terms of, you know, making that move. 192 00:22:03,610 --> 00:22:11,410 A very, very local Oxford scene suddenly takes on quite dark, but also global undertones. 193 00:22:11,410 --> 00:22:21,210 So if I might invite James to sort of speak to that for a little, then yes, I think. 194 00:22:21,210 --> 00:22:31,410 As you say, Oxford is a strange place because it's basically a sort of market town with a couple of universities and a car factory attached, 195 00:22:31,410 --> 00:22:35,790 but yet it is globally connected in an extraordinary way. 196 00:22:35,790 --> 00:22:43,560 And it's also very cosmopolitan. You know, the car factory doubled the population of Oxford between the wars. 197 00:22:43,560 --> 00:22:51,690 People came from all over the Commonwealth in the 50s and 60s to work in there and in associated industries. 198 00:22:51,690 --> 00:22:56,670 At the same time, academics and students are coming from all over the world to the university. 199 00:22:56,670 --> 00:23:02,130 People are coming to work in our hospitals and in the service industries. 200 00:23:02,130 --> 00:23:14,590 Lots of people from the EU at least, were living here because they were working in those industries and in the same way. 201 00:23:14,590 --> 00:23:21,610 I think the discussions that we have here resonate around the world and the river at that moment just struck me. 202 00:23:21,610 --> 00:23:29,770 I mean, I was talking to Darren who? Wasn't this was my first meeting with Darren, you know, 203 00:23:29,770 --> 00:23:43,480 that conversation and we've been talking about his experience as a child of the Windrush generation, 204 00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:52,900 parents living in Oxford, and suddenly that boat boat went by and it sort of lifted our moods for a 205 00:23:52,900 --> 00:23:56,830 second as they sort of sailed off into the distance and they were all partying. 206 00:23:56,830 --> 00:24:02,020 But it just I suddenly had that sense that that physical river joins us, 207 00:24:02,020 --> 00:24:08,680 not just that it is the same river that goes all the way to the mass of the Thames where Conrad's 208 00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:18,370 characters sat on that yacht as the sun went down and know speaks begins his terrifying story, 209 00:24:18,370 --> 00:24:26,270 really. And he says that the river is is something that has served the inhabitants on its banks well. 210 00:24:26,270 --> 00:24:33,190 But then he goes on to say that the conquest of the world is not a pretty sight by which he 211 00:24:33,190 --> 00:24:39,550 says he means taking it away from people with a different complexion or slightly flatter noses. 212 00:24:39,550 --> 00:24:45,850 That's the way he puts it than us. It's not a pretty sight when you look into it too much. 213 00:24:45,850 --> 00:24:57,160 And I suppose that resonated with the discussion I've been having with Darren also about the statue of Cecil Rhodes, which, 214 00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:08,410 of course, is live today with with what's been in the news about academics protesting about its continued presence in High Street. 215 00:25:08,410 --> 00:25:19,690 And I think sometimes. It's a mistake to think this is just something that concerns students and academics in the university, 216 00:25:19,690 --> 00:25:29,440 because Darren was very clear that I mean, he worked for three years as a young man during his catering a level and so on. 217 00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:34,990 He worked in the kitchen, Auriel for three years without ever knowing there was a statue of Rhodes. 218 00:25:34,990 --> 00:25:40,810 And yet now he says now he knows and we see you for who you are. 219 00:25:40,810 --> 00:25:46,150 He says to Rose and we know you've been sapping the life from the inhabitants of this city. 220 00:25:46,150 --> 00:25:56,210 And that echoed very strongly from the words of John account for the artist about Bristol and Coulston, this constant statue, 221 00:25:56,210 --> 00:26:05,900 and saying how, you know, these these objects have a sort of mystical, evil, unpleasant influence on the area in which they're sited. 222 00:26:05,900 --> 00:26:17,170 And Darren's real anger was about these histories, history not too far from erasing history. 223 00:26:17,170 --> 00:26:24,160 It's a question of actually teaching history. And I never knew there was a statue of Cecil Rhodes in the high street of the 224 00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:30,160 city that I live in until Rhodes must fall campaign began five or six years ago. 225 00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:35,890 And so that that statue was teaching me nothing by being up there. 226 00:26:35,890 --> 00:26:42,580 But since then, it's taught me a lot because I've read Rhodes's writings and things like that. 227 00:26:42,580 --> 00:26:47,680 And I've got a better idea of what kind of person he was. Yes. 228 00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:54,520 So so those are the kind of things that made me think about the river as a physical symbol of that interconnectedness. 229 00:26:54,520 --> 00:27:04,210 I mean, I spoke to one student who's been very involved in the Rosmus full campaign, and he told me that they'd had a letter from Canada, 230 00:27:04,210 --> 00:27:12,070 from a primary school named after Cecil Rhodes, who had read about the campaign in Oxford, and they decided to change the name of that primary school. 231 00:27:12,070 --> 00:27:21,220 So that's what I mean, is we can't just imagine we're living in this isolated bubble because there are these global connexions. 232 00:27:21,220 --> 00:27:29,920 Yeah, and I really I mean, in a weird way, then then the virus, which is all about connectivities, the kind of connexions that maybe you don't want, 233 00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:37,690 then allows you to think of Oxford as a city, not just the university, but the relationship between the city and the university. 234 00:27:37,690 --> 00:27:45,490 And I really love that bit about your book and the second scene that what you've just said about people working in service industry, 235 00:27:45,490 --> 00:27:51,160 for example, the supermarkets that have often been written out really of the pandemic narrative. 236 00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:56,020 We don't hear and we hear the tragedies in the care homes and the hospitals and so on. 237 00:27:56,020 --> 00:28:02,530 But that section you have about food chains where you speak to one of the guys who work in the supermarket, 238 00:28:02,530 --> 00:28:09,910 and I was really struck by that same kind of dynamic between interconnectivity is global and then these local, 239 00:28:09,910 --> 00:28:17,140 very shrill kind of, I suppose, disavowal of those interconnectivity that this guy is talking about, 240 00:28:17,140 --> 00:28:23,140 a packet of prawns that we buy that goes from Scotland to Thailand and back to UK 241 00:28:23,140 --> 00:28:30,700 for because the the Thai workers are supposed to be nimbler with their fingers, 242 00:28:30,700 --> 00:28:37,060 but actually it's because they get paid much less, etc. and they come back to Oxford and we go to the local supermarkets. 243 00:28:37,060 --> 00:28:44,270 And then these guys are coming face to face with people who are anxious about the virus, about being too close or etc. from the people. 244 00:28:44,270 --> 00:28:49,210 It's a very weird I think, you know, the government's slogan was, if you can work at home, 245 00:28:49,210 --> 00:28:56,830 stay at home, by definition, most kind of working class jobs, you can't do that. 246 00:28:56,830 --> 00:29:03,850 And I think the sense that this man I was talking to who worked in the supermarket had was 247 00:29:03,850 --> 00:29:09,040 almost as if he and his colleagues were living in a different world to everybody else. 248 00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:13,270 And people would queue in an orderly fashion outside a supermarket. 249 00:29:13,270 --> 00:29:17,950 But once they came in, they'd come up close and ask questions and even touch people. 250 00:29:17,950 --> 00:29:25,540 The union representative was saying, and, you know, these people were expected to carry on functioning. 251 00:29:25,540 --> 00:29:40,890 And then, of course, there was the famous case of one of the early fatalities from covid in the UK was a woman who was working in a. 252 00:29:40,890 --> 00:29:52,650 A food processing plant, and her employers didn't provide proper sick pay to people who got covid, 253 00:29:52,650 --> 00:29:57,990 they just told people that they could have the statutory sick pay of 95 pounds a week. 254 00:29:57,990 --> 00:30:02,820 And for a lot of people, 90 pounds a week might be their rent. They've got dependents. 255 00:30:02,820 --> 00:30:09,450 There's no way they can do that. So this particular woman, even though she had symptoms, she felt terrible. 256 00:30:09,450 --> 00:30:14,950 She felt compelled to come back to work and stand on a production line. 257 00:30:14,950 --> 00:30:25,810 Side by side with her colleagues, she died and many people in that outfit contracted coronavirus, 258 00:30:25,810 --> 00:30:32,120 but it shows the sort of interconnectedness of all these these things, I think. 259 00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:38,320 Well, yeah. And what you also spoke to, there's another moment. 260 00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:41,410 We speak to two very different ladies, don't you? 261 00:30:41,410 --> 00:30:51,250 If you're a professional historian and you also speak to a woman who complains really about about why rule songs like Rule Britannia, 262 00:30:51,250 --> 00:30:59,730 etc., have, she feels, become slightly not quite banned, but taboo, almost uncomfortable to sing. 263 00:30:59,730 --> 00:31:07,840 So what I what I found in your book was really interesting was this, I suppose, relationship between closeness and distance, 264 00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:12,190 how people are having to reappraise their own sense of who they are, 265 00:31:12,190 --> 00:31:16,450 which city they belong to, which country they belong to, what kind of world they belong to. 266 00:31:16,450 --> 00:31:24,880 And that struck me as something that really the virus that's allowed or forced people to do that you capture brilliantly. 267 00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:29,890 If I say so myself. And I really I really enjoyed that. 268 00:31:29,890 --> 00:31:36,070 But I know we have a big conversation coming up or a wider conversation coming up about this. 269 00:31:36,070 --> 00:31:41,140 So I might go back to Marina and start our roundtable chat. 270 00:31:41,140 --> 00:31:46,000 Well, I think that one of the things that is if considering it's not a very long book, 271 00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:51,040 I think people have already realised that it's a very, very richly layered book. 272 00:31:51,040 --> 00:32:01,480 And actually one of the other stories that tells it in a way mirrors your national your story of a place belonging and internationalism is the 273 00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:12,290 evolution of relationships to the hope that the rainbow represented told through the account of people's changing feelings about the clapping. 274 00:32:12,290 --> 00:32:18,710 I mean, James is the book is very trenchant about a political masters. 275 00:32:18,710 --> 00:32:22,430 I mean, wonderful, wonderfully, unflinchingly critical, 276 00:32:22,430 --> 00:32:34,460 and and this story of how people began to realise something we were being had in a way, by being in the news that you tell the story, James. 277 00:32:34,460 --> 00:32:46,280 Yes. Well, you know, I think we all remember when the idea came first arose that on Thursday evening we should clap for the NHS. 278 00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:54,410 And I think a lot of people's experience was that to start with, that was a very positive thing. 279 00:32:54,410 --> 00:33:06,560 We wanted to show appreciation and, you know, just honour those, you know, who were working so hard for us. 280 00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:19,970 But I think after a couple of weeks and and beginning to realise that many NHS workers were very conflicted about this and about language, 281 00:33:19,970 --> 00:33:26,390 about heroes and so on, I mean, you know, as the nurse says, that's that's just what we do. 282 00:33:26,390 --> 00:33:27,620 We do. That's what we do. 283 00:33:27,620 --> 00:33:34,790 If I get a call that needs me at the hospital in five minutes because there's been a major incident, I'll be on my bike and I'll get there. 284 00:33:34,790 --> 00:33:42,320 You know, that's what we do. And they didn't want they didn't want clapping, really. 285 00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:52,100 They wanted perhaps further funding and admission through fair pay and things like that. 286 00:33:52,100 --> 00:34:04,530 And there was also a sense that once you saw politicians standing outside their dwellings clapping that, OK, this has become a kind of smoke screen. 287 00:34:04,530 --> 00:34:16,510 And at the same time, the NHS brand, in a sense, was being put on privatised activities that were catastrophically not. 288 00:34:16,510 --> 00:34:28,270 Useful or not, not functioning properly, allowing people to make money out of things, but branding them, you know, NHS track and trace, for instance. 289 00:34:28,270 --> 00:34:31,900 So so I think there was there was manipulation going there, going on there. 290 00:34:31,900 --> 00:34:40,850 And I think there was gradually I just sort of noticed this sort of increasing discomfort with all of that. 291 00:34:40,850 --> 00:34:43,150 Also capture, you know, the I mean, 292 00:34:43,150 --> 00:34:52,210 the fact that the problem about deception in the public sphere authorities is that it undermines people's trust in all discourse. 293 00:34:52,210 --> 00:35:00,350 And you actually come across some extremely vivid spokespeople for anti Vax and so forth. 294 00:35:00,350 --> 00:35:06,460 Mm hmm. I mean, one of the things I really wanted to do in the book, if I could, 295 00:35:06,460 --> 00:35:12,130 was to get outside the bubble of people who have opinions much like my own, you know? 296 00:35:12,130 --> 00:35:21,050 I mean, because how boring is that? At the end of the day? Much more interesting if you're going on a sort of journey of this kind to. 297 00:35:21,050 --> 00:35:23,930 Have encounters with people who think differently to you. 298 00:35:23,930 --> 00:35:33,810 I mean, Montane, I think, says in his travel journal something like, you know, mixing with mixing with the world, rubs and polishes your brain. 299 00:35:33,810 --> 00:35:37,490 You know, I think we all sort of miss that when we were locked in our house. 300 00:35:37,490 --> 00:35:43,090 It's just that kind of back and forth with people who have slightly different opinions to you. 301 00:35:43,090 --> 00:35:53,270 I mean, in the case of the anti Vox's, I guess, you know, I didn't have an awful lot of sympathy with what they were saying, 302 00:35:53,270 --> 00:36:01,940 but I think I kind of believe in in face to face human conversation rather than 303 00:36:01,940 --> 00:36:06,920 interchanges on the just because when you're in somebody's physical presence, 304 00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:15,530 it's much easier to engage with them as another human being and perhaps feel why they see things differently. 305 00:36:15,530 --> 00:36:19,160 But yes, they were interesting people. I mean, Pablos, you want to jump in? 306 00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:25,160 I know. I was just I was just saying that does the only moment I in normally you're a very patient and curious listener, 307 00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:30,860 and that's the only moment in the book where I sense a little bit of discomfort on your part or 308 00:36:30,860 --> 00:36:36,560 how you portray yourself when you're listening to the Five Conspiracy's and the anti voices, 309 00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:44,130 etc. And I was just wondering what what your I mean, a sense of what Marina was just a moment ago about trust. 310 00:36:44,130 --> 00:36:56,630 A lot of what they're saying, you hear in a general really deeply felt hurt in our public sphere about mistrust and a lack of trust. 311 00:36:56,630 --> 00:37:06,550 So, for example, the woman who keeps on going about crony capitalism, etc., a lot of their analysis of why we shouldn't trust the you know, 312 00:37:06,550 --> 00:37:10,520 the what they call the covid narrative in, in a sense, has a wider resonance. 313 00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:20,540 Right. And then and then it falls back into a kind of, you know, quite specific sort of conspiracy theories, cetera. 314 00:37:20,540 --> 00:37:21,890 I was wondering what you meant, 315 00:37:21,890 --> 00:37:31,040 because was your discomfort to do with the fact that you recognise some of what you're saying and maybe even find yourself in what they 316 00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:40,460 were saying in terms of mistrust and then find yourself to be suddenly thrown from thrown back by the other half of the conversation? 317 00:37:40,460 --> 00:37:47,160 Yeah, I mean, I think the historian actually pointed out that. 318 00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:52,440 You can hear slogans from one source and agree with them and believe them, 319 00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:55,890 and then when you hear them from another source, you're sceptical about them. 320 00:37:55,890 --> 00:38:05,040 And so I do point out that much of the language that that particular woman used about crony capitalism 321 00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:12,240 and billionaires profiting and so on could equally have come from from a left wing source. 322 00:38:12,240 --> 00:38:17,890 But know self, right? Oh, yeah, exactly. 323 00:38:17,890 --> 00:38:22,770 So I think. Yeah, but yes. 324 00:38:22,770 --> 00:38:28,560 So that that does make it difficult to sort of navigate your way through these things. 325 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:37,230 And also, I think I'm obviously sympathetic to people who for historical reasons, 326 00:38:37,230 --> 00:38:44,150 have a distrust of, you know, stuff coming from the government towards them. 327 00:38:44,150 --> 00:38:52,980 You know, there might be many reasons for that, but I think yeah, I think perhaps I loud I mean, 328 00:38:52,980 --> 00:38:58,390 consciously, I allowed my slight impatience to show at that point. 329 00:38:58,390 --> 00:39:05,160 You went back to her, didn't you? You didn't go back. I mean, you kind of fled and then you decided you must listen to her. 330 00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:10,560 Yeah, I did. I went back and I listened. And I'm glad I did, you know. 331 00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:18,120 Yes, they do. In a way, the unpeeling of these layers is a very sad story. 332 00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:27,420 I mean, not only the desolation of the pandemic itself, but also of all these points of disillusion and estrangement that seems to have happened. 333 00:39:27,420 --> 00:39:31,350 The actual buoyancy of the book rises towards the end. 334 00:39:31,350 --> 00:39:35,520 I mean, people have spoken to you, you've spoken to them, listen to them. 335 00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:42,960 And then you actually ask you quote Thomas Brown saying, you know, is there a way to build a novel Britannia? 336 00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:48,400 I think that's what you said. I mean, do you feel there's some hope? 337 00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:56,750 Yeah. Well, I feel I've got a feeling that we've kind of somehow got to. 338 00:39:56,750 --> 00:40:07,880 Come to understand other people's opinions, and I mean what struck me, Pablo, is something that you alluded to with with the two different women, 339 00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:16,280 the historian and the V Day enthusiast who wanted to be allowed to sing Rule Britannia because she 340 00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:22,490 said she grew up in the war and it was about Britain's never being slaves being taken over by. 341 00:40:22,490 --> 00:40:26,940 She didn't see it as being about the trade of enslaved people. 342 00:40:26,940 --> 00:40:33,140 She saw it as about, you know, being safe from invasion. 343 00:40:33,140 --> 00:40:38,660 But I think something else that we've touched on, you know, Pablo, 344 00:40:38,660 --> 00:40:45,860 when we've chatted is the sort of slippery nature of terms like Britishness and an English and so on. 345 00:40:45,860 --> 00:40:56,540 And I think the problem is that we've become very polarised and people have got a very different idea of what these terms now mean. 346 00:40:56,540 --> 00:41:08,090 And of course, we're living at a time when the union might be anyway coming to an end in the form that we now understand it. 347 00:41:08,090 --> 00:41:16,850 But. At some point, we're going to have to come to a sort of agreement about what is what do we think 348 00:41:16,850 --> 00:41:22,430 our country is and what it means and what can we kind of gather around that we 349 00:41:22,430 --> 00:41:28,970 agree on or because there's a certain mode of politics that we've seen in America 350 00:41:28,970 --> 00:41:35,180 recently that just is based on perpetual division and stoking up those divisions. 351 00:41:35,180 --> 00:41:41,420 But I think eventually I mean, my hope is that people get exhausted by that and they then look for something else. 352 00:41:41,420 --> 00:41:49,800 And so, you know, we've got to have some hope. But I think it is is sort of. 353 00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:57,240 Dan, to us to somehow find a way of having a dialogue with people that don't have the same opinions as ourselves. 354 00:41:57,240 --> 00:42:01,620 I mean, there's a great moment, but raise the question of hope. 355 00:42:01,620 --> 00:42:06,540 I mean, for me, the book was is actually full of hope. And it comes out in very little moments. 356 00:42:06,540 --> 00:42:15,160 For example, I'm thinking of the redoubtable Pavulon landlady who's facing you, but as she's facing you out of the corner of her eye, 357 00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:21,300 she can see the van being parked in the space of the binmen and she runs out and 358 00:42:21,300 --> 00:42:27,180 chases the van away because she says it's very important to keep the binmen on side. 359 00:42:27,180 --> 00:42:32,130 Right. So what do you what you have is this extraordinary story. 360 00:42:32,130 --> 00:42:40,110 Yes. Who who she is. She knows the value people bring, such as binmen to her own lives. 361 00:42:40,110 --> 00:42:45,750 And she's horsehide an eagle eyed about about protecting that kind of alliance. 362 00:42:45,750 --> 00:42:49,740 And I found the book full of alliances of of that sort. 363 00:42:49,740 --> 00:43:00,180 And perhaps for me, the greatest hope out of the book is how resilient people have been despite everything to preserve and fight for those alliances. 364 00:43:00,180 --> 00:43:04,800 And I found that I mean, partly because obviously I know the pub and I recognise the landlady. 365 00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:09,870 I thought I thought that was a great example of small hope's small acts of hope. 366 00:43:09,870 --> 00:43:16,710 Absolutely. Lighting the candle. You do quote the paper, is that you liked the Tapert post in the paper. 367 00:43:16,710 --> 00:43:27,170 I don't think this is an idea that, you know, you have to light a candle, light another candle, which it doesn't diminish or your light it on. 368 00:43:27,170 --> 00:43:31,230 Yeah, no, I think you're right. The sort of. 369 00:43:31,230 --> 00:43:42,030 The strength and resilience of some of the characters I talk to and their openness about what they've been through is extraordinary. 370 00:43:42,030 --> 00:43:48,540 And, you know, for obvious reasons, I sort of said to everybody is fine if you want to be anonymous. 371 00:43:48,540 --> 00:43:52,110 And most people chose to follow that. 372 00:43:52,110 --> 00:44:03,960 But there was one particular person who got back to me, and it's quite nerve wracking writing about where you live, 373 00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:13,230 because, of course, people will agree to be recorded and interviewed and it's going to be in a book. 374 00:44:13,230 --> 00:44:20,970 But sometimes I was just worried that people, when they actually saw it on the page, would feel a knock on your door. 375 00:44:20,970 --> 00:44:30,080 You've got one particular person said to me that. 376 00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:35,430 It started a conversation in their family because. 377 00:44:35,430 --> 00:44:45,200 Their parents hadn't known quite how. Distressing it had been for them during the pandemic, but. 378 00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:46,720 When they saw that, they thought, right. 379 00:44:46,720 --> 00:44:55,640 I've got to have that conversation and they sent the book to their parent and had that conversation and that sort of move something forward, 380 00:44:55,640 --> 00:45:00,320 and other people have said that it's been a way of processing things that have happened. 381 00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:11,120 I mean, the the fantastic nurse who when I spoke to her, I managed to get a time when she wasn't on shift. 382 00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:18,890 She was just like, sit there. And she just sort of spoke in an unbroken way so powerfully. 383 00:45:18,890 --> 00:45:23,450 And she she read the book and she was very positive. 384 00:45:23,450 --> 00:45:31,550 But she actually gave me an update in the last couple of days where she said the first way she'd worked for the second wave as well, 385 00:45:31,550 --> 00:45:39,540 which is in January and February. And she said the first wave that she describes in the book, which made her so angry the way things were happening, 386 00:45:39,540 --> 00:45:43,850 she said second wave made the first wave look like a picnic. 387 00:45:43,850 --> 00:45:48,110 She said in the first wave, we saved more than we lost in the second wave. 388 00:45:48,110 --> 00:45:57,050 It was the other other way round. But she said, strangely, reading her own words, she realised how angry she'd been. 389 00:45:57,050 --> 00:46:05,390 And she said now she's almost calm and resigned because just determined to live her life to the full because she'd 390 00:46:05,390 --> 00:46:12,440 seen so many people whose lives have been ended before they could do the things they've been wanting to do. 391 00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:16,130 And, you know, I find I found these people extraordinary. 392 00:46:16,130 --> 00:46:24,290 I also found the young woman I spoke to about extinction rebellion, 393 00:46:24,290 --> 00:46:38,870 who was 13 at the time and who was undertaking various actions and getting time off school before before school was closed, of course, to do things. 394 00:46:38,870 --> 00:46:48,810 I found her testimony very powerful because I was just so conscious listening to her talk of the sort of weight that her generation, 395 00:46:48,810 --> 00:46:54,500 the carrying of the stuff that we landed them with, really. 396 00:46:54,500 --> 00:46:59,960 And there were some moments when I just said, how does it feel? 397 00:46:59,960 --> 00:47:09,980 How does that feel? And she said, well, it's strange because I was asked about what she sees I'm going to be doing next year. 398 00:47:09,980 --> 00:47:11,270 And I just thought, well, 399 00:47:11,270 --> 00:47:19,130 there's not much point about thinking about the future because I might not have much future anyway unless we stop what we're doing. 400 00:47:19,130 --> 00:47:27,200 And I just found that so powerful to hear from this young person who was also so determined to make a change. 401 00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:31,640 And I think those things are incredibly hopeful. 402 00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:37,040 Yeah, really. I want to ask you something, because your last book or perhaps not your only last book, 403 00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:44,270 but it was Guernica, the famous painting, and that's sort of permanent. 404 00:47:44,270 --> 00:47:53,600 What is this is about impermanent art. And I want to I wanted to ask you if you feel that it's a good idea to move towards permanence. 405 00:47:53,600 --> 00:48:00,050 I mean, your book is a permanent work in a way or the equivalent. 406 00:48:00,050 --> 00:48:10,790 But would it be an idea, for example, to actually try to have a kind of a statement, a kind of pandemic? 407 00:48:10,790 --> 00:48:20,850 Should we commission something not not necessarily a statue, maybe, maybe something like what's the back of your book, 408 00:48:20,850 --> 00:48:28,190 your on the back of your screen sort of a map that would kind of capture experience. 409 00:48:28,190 --> 00:48:38,990 And I actually the my main question is between the ephemeral nature of the rainbows and the idea of the permanent masterwork like the Guernica. 410 00:48:38,990 --> 00:48:50,780 Yes, I'll give you Frohna, you've thrown me a question that slightly floored me then mean I'm not sure what what form that will 411 00:48:50,780 --> 00:49:00,240 take and maybe it will just be in multiple novels and poetry and some books that come out of it. 412 00:49:00,240 --> 00:49:09,800 And, you know, I'm just not sure. I mean, I know that people have been collecting people's testimonies and all of this kind of saying, 413 00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:17,030 I think various museums have been at work in this way, but I can't nothing springs to mind. 414 00:49:17,030 --> 00:49:20,880 I mean, on the subject of statues, 415 00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:35,930 it did occur to me that just returning briefly to Cecil and his statue and and the idea that it was so expensive to take it down and what would we do? 416 00:49:35,930 --> 00:49:48,060 I just thought one could detoxify the legacy which is now being used for positive things, finances and so on, by remembering, you know, 417 00:49:48,060 --> 00:49:58,190 that Mandela Rhodes Foundation and the fact that the Mandela sort of agreed to have his name alongside Cecil Rhodes, 418 00:49:58,190 --> 00:50:11,510 knowing full well that what that legacy is in a sort of positive frame of mind that you can't have. 419 00:50:11,510 --> 00:50:16,010 You know, you can't have reconciliation without reparation and truth. 420 00:50:16,010 --> 00:50:29,090 But I thought, why not commission an artist of African descent to make a statue of Nelson Mandela and put that in the place of Cecil Rhodes? 421 00:50:29,090 --> 00:50:36,920 And you would still be honouring the work of the Rhodes Trust and the abandonment? 422 00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:46,580 Yes. I mean, I think it's disingenuous to say it's too expensive to take down because they could just screener's and shroud it with another artwork. 423 00:50:46,580 --> 00:50:49,740 There's many other people thinking and talking about that. 424 00:50:49,740 --> 00:50:59,090 I guess if I if what I know is about to jump in, Marina's question is very, very interesting about about the statuesque and ephemeral. 425 00:50:59,090 --> 00:51:03,320 And just to two blocks down from me, there's a street. 426 00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:12,380 And one of the interesting thing about this art has been it has a year to change and and and disappear and reappear. 427 00:51:12,380 --> 00:51:13,970 Just a few blocks down from me, 428 00:51:13,970 --> 00:51:22,760 there's a street which has now become almost a semi-permanent display of art of all kinds related to pandemic's rainbows, 429 00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:28,910 but also to do with schools, to do with just just people's daily responses of a two year pandemic. 430 00:51:28,910 --> 00:51:34,010 And that's you know, it changes. It's not the same thing. Things get taken down, things get put up. 431 00:51:34,010 --> 00:51:39,690 It seems to me a splendid example of what public art can be that is not statuesque. 432 00:51:39,690 --> 00:51:49,370 That's not monolithic in a sense. It's a very interesting point, a community that's been energised and brought together by the shared experience. 433 00:51:49,370 --> 00:51:53,630 Yeah, I don't want to stop this amazing discussion. 434 00:51:53,630 --> 00:51:58,820 It's really very, very enjoyable and really kind of insightful on so many levels. 435 00:51:58,820 --> 00:52:02,840 But I suppose, well, it is partly my job to bring in questions. 436 00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:08,240 One one is to do with in a sense, you've already addressed it, but I'd like to come back to it. 437 00:52:08,240 --> 00:52:13,760 And that's the question of how much is this book a book about the first lockdown? 438 00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:19,670 How much is it in a sense, therefore, already about a time that we're not living in anymore. 439 00:52:19,670 --> 00:52:28,400 And indeed, James, you mentioned that the nurse in particular came back to you and said, actually, look, this isn't like it was. 440 00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:35,360 And I wondered, you know, do you now need to write another one about now, about the second book, about the third lock down? 441 00:52:35,360 --> 00:52:42,230 I mean, in other words, is this about a particular time that's actually already historical on some level? 442 00:52:42,230 --> 00:52:49,130 Well, the weird thing is that so many of the things that people talked about in the, 443 00:52:49,130 --> 00:53:00,560 you know, at that point are now being played out in current political debates and questions. 444 00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:04,820 And it still feels very sort of topical to me. 445 00:53:04,820 --> 00:53:17,660 And I think in one sense, it's like a bubble in the Arctic ice that scientists can find and release and feel. 446 00:53:17,660 --> 00:53:27,260 What was the ER like at that time? I mean, I sort of try and locate it in time between the spring and the autumn equinox of last year. 447 00:53:27,260 --> 00:53:35,450 But of course I was priests were still going back and forth till December or something, and there was time to tweak a few little things. 448 00:53:35,450 --> 00:53:48,350 But I think the issues, the. Raised beyond that particular moment for a really let me be clear, I really didn't mean it moment has gone. 449 00:53:48,350 --> 00:53:50,750 It was more a question. It's partly about that thing, 450 00:53:50,750 --> 00:53:58,310 about how one of the things you trace so powerfully is the sort of instrumental ization of hope or the instrumental ization of 451 00:53:58,310 --> 00:54:05,750 a particular symbol that then becomes used by other people in ways that are both positive and negative across across the book. 452 00:54:05,750 --> 00:54:12,650 And I think I think what the person is asking is, you know, what has happened to the hope that people had at the beginning? 453 00:54:12,650 --> 00:54:17,090 Have we had to lose that or is there a new kind of hope now and so on? 454 00:54:17,090 --> 00:54:25,070 So it's yeah, it's about how do you sustain that hope over time when when we've been through in a sense, 455 00:54:25,070 --> 00:54:30,370 we've been through this before, but we also haven't because it's different each time, you know. 456 00:54:30,370 --> 00:54:41,900 Yeah. Another one of the the questions is, is about this sort of statue question and somebody suggests that and this is actually very nice. 457 00:54:41,900 --> 00:54:46,040 Obviously, somebody is a regular for torch suggests that we might all go and see something. 458 00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:50,060 Campbell, Bali's exhibition in modern Oxford, I don't know if you have already, 459 00:54:50,060 --> 00:54:56,750 but where one of the things is precisely as sort of the elephant made of my gowns. 460 00:54:56,750 --> 00:55:00,050 And as I mentioned in the conversation we have with something, 461 00:55:00,050 --> 00:55:05,330 it would be very nice to parade those elephants up and down the high street, for example. 462 00:55:05,330 --> 00:55:12,770 And yeah, so I mean, clearly. But in the sense that that's more the question about distributing whatever public art is across 463 00:55:12,770 --> 00:55:19,930 and name a number of different spaces rather than necessarily monumental in one moment. 464 00:55:19,930 --> 00:55:24,460 Yeah, we're all nodding faintly at that. Do you want to go on to say more about that, James? 465 00:55:24,460 --> 00:55:28,390 Is that enough? I don't know. What about you, Marina? 466 00:55:28,390 --> 00:55:34,780 I mean, I think yeah, in a sense, 467 00:55:34,780 --> 00:55:41,740 the discussions about statues that we're having are sort of warning about attempting to create 468 00:55:41,740 --> 00:55:49,960 a permanent historical artefact that will resonate down the generations in the same way. 469 00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:58,960 You know, and you give an example of the monument to the Great Fire of London that left the inscription keeps being changed. 470 00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:03,960 And actually the Beckett exhibition of the moment, the British Museum first exhibition I went to, 471 00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:09,550 a sense tells you that tells is absolutely cataclysmic story in which one moment is 472 00:56:09,550 --> 00:56:16,240 people are drinking his blood in order to be cured of leprosy because he's such a major, 473 00:56:16,240 --> 00:56:22,180 a working saint. And then 200 years later or three years later, he's expunged from the annals. 474 00:56:22,180 --> 00:56:28,210 You know, if you go to his relics of smashed, the country is destroyed. 475 00:56:28,210 --> 00:56:36,760 He's not to be mentioned. So so these historical vicissitudes do point to not trying to make permanent truth. 476 00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:44,830 Absolutely. And the monuments in London, you know, was erected in memory of the great fire. 477 00:56:44,830 --> 00:56:53,980 And then a conspiracy theory came along that the fire had been started by papists plotters. 478 00:56:53,980 --> 00:57:03,310 So a sentence was added to say that, you know, that it was all their fault and it was taken off and then it was put on again. 479 00:57:03,310 --> 00:57:11,950 And it stayed there until the eighteen thirties, accusing the Catholics of having lit the fire of London. 480 00:57:11,950 --> 00:57:20,920 And I wondered if those who argued against the erasure of history would think that it should still be there. 481 00:57:20,920 --> 00:57:26,350 Of course, it's been removed now in the 19th century, as Ruth. But would those same people say, oh, 482 00:57:26,350 --> 00:57:34,810 you mustn't remove it because it's history and it's fine to make all the Catholic people in London feel slightly terrified. 483 00:57:34,810 --> 00:57:39,910 And, you know, there's also a peculiar vision of history, isn't it? 484 00:57:39,910 --> 00:57:45,400 Because as you yourself said, you've lived in Oxford all your life till or a large part of your life. 485 00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:49,480 And only a few years ago, you became aware of Cicero, a statue. 486 00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:55,410 So the equation of statues with history is a very odd gesture, I think. 487 00:57:55,410 --> 00:58:03,820 I think the message of some of the people that I spoke to is what hurts is not telling history. 488 00:58:03,820 --> 00:58:12,550 Then, you know, and by taking statues down and putting them in museums and contextualising them, 489 00:58:12,550 --> 00:58:17,680 then you really you tell people, you know, to teach people about history. 490 00:58:17,680 --> 00:58:20,950 And a lot of us you know, I lived in London for a long time. 491 00:58:20,950 --> 00:58:28,150 And, you know, you walk around those statues all over the place and unless you were really looking, you don't even think, who was that? 492 00:58:28,150 --> 00:58:37,150 It's just some bloke on a horse. You know, I've got one more question, which is about the title. 493 00:58:37,150 --> 00:58:44,320 And the question is why under rather than over? 494 00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:49,780 I guess, you know, it was a little pun on the song Over the Rainbow, 495 00:58:49,780 --> 00:58:56,020 but it was it was sort of leading to a feeling that we were somehow living beneath this sign. 496 00:58:56,020 --> 00:59:05,920 It was kind of omnipresent and. Yeah, so that's that's I suppose if I'm interpreting the question, it's partly again, about hope. 497 00:59:05,920 --> 00:59:11,920 The song Over the Rainbow is the song about hope and about somewhere, some other world that might exist. 498 00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:17,350 And and obviously the whole question of, you know what for what at the end of the rainbow and so on. 499 00:59:17,350 --> 00:59:19,150 And I suppose, yeah, 500 00:59:19,150 --> 00:59:27,530 that you're right that the or the question is right and your response is right there under give the sense of a sort of constrained, 501 00:59:27,530 --> 00:59:33,310 a constrained living, but nonetheless with some measure of hope in it. 502 00:59:33,310 --> 00:59:40,960 Yeah, because look at the traditional drawing, the one that James has recorded, not the usual Similac. 503 00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:45,290 Now that leads up to heaven, the sort of celestial sign. 504 00:59:45,290 --> 00:59:48,720 It's a it's a it's an arch. It's a hoop. It comes back to earth. 505 00:59:48,720 --> 00:59:52,810 Yes, yes, yes. I mean, it is a slightly different rainbow from what one usually. 506 00:59:52,810 --> 00:59:58,490 I mean, I've hardly ever seen a rainbow that touches on both ends. I think I've seen once. 507 00:59:58,490 --> 01:00:04,330 Yep. Yep. We're running out of time now, finally. 508 01:00:04,330 --> 01:00:08,980 But I just want to thank everybody present. 509 01:00:08,980 --> 01:00:14,140 So, Marina, Pablo, James, everybody listening and watching online. 510 01:00:14,140 --> 01:00:17,710 And [INAUDIBLE] catch up online on that part of the strange world we live in. 511 01:00:17,710 --> 01:00:19,350 Now, if that things happen at. 512 01:00:19,350 --> 01:00:30,050 Different paces whilst also life, but really just thank you so much for what, James, first of all, for writing the book and. 513 01:00:30,050 --> 01:00:36,860 Yeah, absolutely. And then Pablo and Marina for responding so warmly and generously. 514 01:00:36,860 --> 01:00:40,980 Thanks. Thank you. All three. It's really been great. Great pleasure. 515 01:00:40,980 --> 01:00:52,940 Yeah. And to thank our listeners watchers for being here, to thank the backstage team and Mia and Holly George for making this possible. 516 01:00:52,940 --> 01:00:58,460 And then before I leave, just to say our next event is Thursday, the twenty Fourth of July. 517 01:00:58,460 --> 01:01:04,670 So in two weeks time, one more time this time we have another Big Ten live event before the summer break. 518 01:01:04,670 --> 01:01:15,290 And then we'll be we'll welcome award winning poet, lyricist, musician, etc and activist Benjamin Zephaniah at five pm for this time alive discussion. 519 01:01:15,290 --> 01:01:22,680 So we will actually be in a room, we will be in discussion, in collaboration with the arts, in action and the postcolonial writers make World Project. 520 01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:31,770 The Faculty of English will be coming to you live from the Story Museum. So some of us at least will be like others can be watching at home. 521 01:01:31,770 --> 01:01:39,650 But for now, thanks once again to all three of you and to thank you so much and have a good rest of an evening. 522 01:01:39,650 --> 01:02:20,003 Goodbye. You too.