1 00:00:02,450 --> 00:00:07,909 Hello and welcome to Pivot Points. This is the podcast about the pivotal moments that have shaped our academic, 2 00:00:07,910 --> 00:00:13,040 professional and personal lives and some Kayo, head of communications at Wolfson College. 3 00:00:13,040 --> 00:00:17,030 And I'm all about creating ways for you to share your stories like this podcast. 4 00:00:19,210 --> 00:00:30,650 This episode is a conversation with Hominy Lee, who was Wilson's president from 2008 to 2017 as Tim's predecessor, as a writer of biographies. 5 00:00:30,670 --> 00:00:36,880 She's naturally very curious about people, so would obviously rather be in my shoes as the interviewer. 6 00:00:37,500 --> 00:00:42,220 And we're very lucky that she was brave enough to step into another role as the interviewee. 7 00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:48,150 Thank you very much for coming in and being on the podcast. 8 00:00:49,500 --> 00:00:57,870 One thing I have to say is that I, I don't think I've ever known a head of a former head of an institution or a former boss or someone 9 00:00:57,870 --> 00:01:04,850 in that capacity with such a consistently positive reputation from everybody that I speak in. 10 00:01:06,720 --> 00:01:11,040 So how does it feel for you now coming out of Hollywood? Yes, we are recording. 11 00:01:11,880 --> 00:01:15,060 This is lovely. Well, that's very nice of you to say. 12 00:01:15,070 --> 00:01:21,630 I'm sure that if you had picked your your, you know, people more carefully, you might have found something to promote. 13 00:01:22,530 --> 00:01:24,750 It's it's very nice coming back, I think. 14 00:01:26,130 --> 00:01:34,890 I regard this job and I think a lot of other people who do this kind of job think the same as a kind of relay race. 15 00:01:35,370 --> 00:01:39,810 I was actually at school always terribly, terribly bad in relay races at passing the baton. 16 00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:44,460 I would always be the person that dropped the baton, failed to pick up the baton. 17 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:48,450 So I, you know, would have liked wanted to come become this or that. 18 00:01:49,740 --> 00:01:58,080 And so it's very nice to have passed the baton and to see different concerns coming up with the next head of house, 19 00:01:58,080 --> 00:02:02,129 but also some of the same old issues coming around clearly. 20 00:02:02,130 --> 00:02:12,420 And it but it's a great pleasure to see a college which you've put nine years of your life into as your last, you know, fully paid up job. 21 00:02:13,080 --> 00:02:19,170 Very nice to see it in such good hands and and going forward in such an imaginative and enterprising way. 22 00:02:19,380 --> 00:02:21,240 So it's nothing but a pleasure to come back. 23 00:02:21,240 --> 00:02:26,880 And it's a particular pleasure because you can come back and eat and drink and be married and not have to have to work. 24 00:02:27,270 --> 00:02:31,020 Exactly. Right. Yeah. Nine years is a very long time. It is a long time. 25 00:02:31,770 --> 00:02:37,829 And I suppose my my follow up question from that really is that you you obviously have a long history with Oxford. 26 00:02:37,830 --> 00:02:43,200 And that brings me to your first pivot point of deciding to come here at the age of 17. 27 00:02:43,440 --> 00:02:47,460 Yes. So let's start with that and then work forward from that. 28 00:02:48,330 --> 00:03:03,300 So, yes. One of the pivot points I've chosen is a very, very vivid memory of coming to Oxford in October 1965 and coming to Hilda's. 29 00:03:04,280 --> 00:03:13,460 And I came up quite young because I had taken the then Oxford entrance exam when I was 16, and so I came out when I was 17 and I had had a very. 30 00:03:16,730 --> 00:03:23,090 Privileged, bookish musical, middle class London childhood. 31 00:03:24,140 --> 00:03:27,260 His daughter. An adopted daughter and. 32 00:03:28,290 --> 00:03:34,199 I had been quite a stay at home. I hadn't been a very adventurous, runaway kind of child. 33 00:03:34,200 --> 00:03:37,080 I had not actually lived away from home before. 34 00:03:37,530 --> 00:03:47,579 So the moment of getting out of the car and walking away from the car down to kind of race towards the gates of St Kilda was 35 00:03:47,580 --> 00:03:54,810 actually a tremendously important moment for me and I remember making an internal decision that I wasn't going to turn round. 36 00:03:56,320 --> 00:04:02,530 And this sort of ludicrous, self-appointed moment of this is where my independence starts. 37 00:04:02,770 --> 00:04:06,460 I'm sure my poor parents were sitting in the cockpit. She's not giving us away. 38 00:04:06,790 --> 00:04:10,490 And I remember feeling my legs trembling. I'm thinking, I'm not going to turn around. 39 00:04:10,510 --> 00:04:12,610 I'm now going to be an independent adult. 40 00:04:13,600 --> 00:04:21,309 Actually, of course, that is one of the most important things about going to university at whatever age, really. 41 00:04:21,310 --> 00:04:30,160 But especially when you go in your teens, which is whatever you learn, you are going to learn to be an independent adult. 42 00:04:30,160 --> 00:04:35,320 You're going to make your own ghastly mistakes and you're going to make your own choices. 43 00:04:36,910 --> 00:04:48,250 And I went cushioned in those years by the fact that, you know, since well, since after World War Two, the government, 44 00:04:48,250 --> 00:04:59,270 through the local education authorities, had paid students fees and had provided maintenance grants and all that was swept away in the in the 1990s. 45 00:04:59,290 --> 00:05:08,940 And I also had very strong parental support, so I could afford to go to university away from my hometown, for instance, which many students can't do. 46 00:05:09,670 --> 00:05:20,590 And I was cushioned in that way, which I, looking back on, I think, offers an era of extraordinary privilege and good luck and good fortune. 47 00:05:20,950 --> 00:05:24,400 At the time, I took it completely for granted. 48 00:05:24,850 --> 00:05:30,129 I don't think I ever thought about it. I simply regarded it as my life and this is what I was going to do. 49 00:05:30,130 --> 00:05:33,790 And I had an exhibition to sell does, and I was very proud of that. 50 00:05:33,790 --> 00:05:38,859 And I was kind of a 17 year old girl and I was going to have a wonderful time. 51 00:05:38,860 --> 00:05:43,960 And on the whole, I did. I never thought about the money. And looking back now, 52 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:55,300 I suppose one of the moral lessons that I give to myself is not to not to take things for granted and to be aware of your good fortune, 53 00:05:55,390 --> 00:06:03,700 to be aware of your opportunities. And I know I talk to my my husband's grandchildren, for instance, and who in their teens, in their twenties. 54 00:06:03,700 --> 00:06:15,790 And this generation of people of that age seem to be far more aware of the political and social basis on which they're living their lives far, 55 00:06:15,790 --> 00:06:19,240 far more than I was and many of my generation were. 56 00:06:19,690 --> 00:06:23,200 So that's that's been a big change in many ways. 57 00:06:23,380 --> 00:06:25,750 And then I walked into St Hilda's. And the first thing, 58 00:06:25,750 --> 00:06:35,620 pretty much the first thing that happened in that freshers week was that I met six other girls and I think on the first 59 00:06:35,620 --> 00:06:42,580 day they were all very different and we remained friends for the whole of the three years we were a sort of group. 60 00:06:43,150 --> 00:06:53,260 And that that solidarity of female friendship, which was actually a very important part of the Single Sex College to go, 61 00:06:53,260 --> 00:06:57,880 I'm sure it continues, was incredibly important to me. 62 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:03,879 And I actually I mean, they met various different destinies, some of them rather sad. 63 00:07:03,880 --> 00:07:08,200 But, um, and I lost touch actually with, with most of them. 64 00:07:08,200 --> 00:07:19,540 But just last week I went to a memorial event at St Cross College and for the previous Masters and Cross rep, 65 00:07:19,540 --> 00:07:24,400 and his widow was one of those girls that I had met in 1965. 66 00:07:24,610 --> 00:07:29,800 And it was it was a sad occasion, but it was also very wonderful to have that reunion. 67 00:07:30,580 --> 00:07:37,810 57 years after I'd first met her and to think of those lives all going on. 68 00:07:38,080 --> 00:07:45,370 So, yes, so that female solidarity was a tremendously important thing in my life and did change my life, actually. 69 00:07:45,370 --> 00:07:49,050 And. Would probably lead me on to my next pivot point. 70 00:07:49,170 --> 00:07:54,840 Yes. And what did you struggle with at that time? Why? 71 00:07:56,020 --> 00:08:02,950 I want you to be. Tremendously popular, tremendously active. 72 00:08:03,520 --> 00:08:08,290 Have a finger in every pie. I wasn't interested in politics and I wasn't interested in sport. 73 00:08:08,710 --> 00:08:19,750 Those were totally close books to me that I was very interested in journalism and I was very interested in theatre and I wanted to make my mark, 74 00:08:19,750 --> 00:08:24,940 I think, and at the same time I wanted to do very well by my tutors. 75 00:08:24,940 --> 00:08:35,919 I had a remarkable set of tutors of that generation of rather fierce, very independent women tutors who seemed to be incredibly old at the time. 76 00:08:35,920 --> 00:08:38,620 They were probably in their thirties. Can you pick one and describe? 77 00:08:38,760 --> 00:08:45,430 Oh, it was a splendid lady called Ann Eliot, who left a very strong mark on all her students. 78 00:08:46,450 --> 00:08:50,430 And she was beautiful, too. 79 00:08:50,530 --> 00:08:58,420 She had a bone and clean, very plain, severe clothes, and she was extremely quiet. 80 00:08:59,110 --> 00:09:05,810 And she was a great Spenser scholar. And I was I couldn't make heads or tails, so that was just a foolish risk. 81 00:09:05,980 --> 00:09:10,510 But she had this habit of you would say something you thought was absolutely brilliant in your tutorial, 82 00:09:10,510 --> 00:09:17,680 and there would be a gigantic pause, tremendous silence while you heard your remarks falling flat. 83 00:09:18,910 --> 00:09:24,160 And then after a very long time, she would make a somewhat quizzical comment. 84 00:09:24,160 --> 00:09:28,510 And I always wanted to be able to teach her, and of course I never did. So I took all the time. 85 00:09:30,670 --> 00:09:35,469 But she you know, she was very remarkable. And she was she was very austere. 86 00:09:35,470 --> 00:09:37,990 And she there was something a bit non like about her. 87 00:09:39,520 --> 00:09:46,780 And I tremendously wanted her respect and admiration at the same time I went to school for an act in place. 88 00:09:46,790 --> 00:09:49,390 And so I think one of the problems was, 89 00:09:50,050 --> 00:10:01,450 was that and the other was a sort of the usual kind of crazy emotional seesaw that most teenagers have when they go up to university, 90 00:10:01,450 --> 00:10:06,399 and suddenly they're surrounded by all kinds of people trying to influence them in all kinds of ways. 91 00:10:06,400 --> 00:10:11,530 And of course, in those days, there were far fewer women at Oxford than there were men. 92 00:10:11,530 --> 00:10:16,300 So we had a great time. Yeah, course. At the same time, it was all quite hectic. 93 00:10:16,390 --> 00:10:18,490 Yes. You mentioned something else. Yes. 94 00:10:19,210 --> 00:10:29,050 I'm also interested in what impact your Oxford experience, as in the label of having come to Oxford has on your identity? 95 00:10:29,260 --> 00:10:35,230 Because I think that's something that comes up in my conversations here in the college just and in the university as a whole, 96 00:10:35,650 --> 00:10:39,940 this idea of the reputation that going to Oxford carries. 97 00:10:41,990 --> 00:10:45,880 Yes. I think it's a good and bad reputation, actually. 98 00:10:45,890 --> 00:10:51,710 I mean, there is still and I think in some ways, probably rightly so, an aura of. 99 00:10:54,160 --> 00:10:59,129 Privilege. Around the Oxford experience. 100 00:10:59,130 --> 00:11:06,720 And we've all, all of us involved in Oxford teaching and Oxford Life and Oxford Administration are all, 101 00:11:07,080 --> 00:11:11,250 you know, have been and are working hard to to change that. 102 00:11:11,940 --> 00:11:17,190 But I think it's still there. And I and it doesn't always serve you in good stead. 103 00:11:17,790 --> 00:11:25,650 You know, people who apply for jobs to other universities can sometimes find that their Oxford degree 104 00:11:25,860 --> 00:11:30,959 is not necessarily their best passport and that the potential employers will be thinking, 105 00:11:30,960 --> 00:11:38,000 oh, well, they were at Oxford, and so they won't understand the system in this in this university that does that does, I think happen. 106 00:11:38,220 --> 00:11:44,770 On the other hand, of course, you have the astonishing luxuries of the intellectual life here. 107 00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:52,500 You know, in my case, principally the library, which is not like anywhere else in the world, really. 108 00:11:52,530 --> 00:12:00,100 And to have had that library for three years in one's life, indeed, in my case, for five years, because I went on and did a single. 109 00:12:01,230 --> 00:12:06,719 So it's it's both, of course, enormously important and advantageous. 110 00:12:06,720 --> 00:12:16,980 And in some ways, it's it's not exactly a shackle, but it's an identifying mark, which doesn't always work to the good. 111 00:12:16,980 --> 00:12:25,410 In my case, it was, you know, crucially important to me that I left Oxford after my undergraduate and graduate 112 00:12:25,410 --> 00:12:33,680 years and spent 31 years teaching in other institutions and then came back in 98. 113 00:12:33,690 --> 00:12:42,960 So it's it's been of the utmost importance for me to have those years in America and Liverpool and University, which had nothing to do with Oxford. 114 00:12:43,230 --> 00:12:47,820 Yeah. How did you then feel after completing your degrees in Oxford? 115 00:12:48,060 --> 00:12:55,140 How did you feel about yourself and where you wanted to go in life? I didn't want to leave when I finished my undergraduate degree in. 116 00:12:57,250 --> 00:13:03,910 I got it first and I was being encouraged to stay on. 117 00:13:05,980 --> 00:13:16,390 I remember very vividly in my last year having a choice between playing Masha in the production of Three Sisters and working for a first. 118 00:13:17,500 --> 00:13:26,110 And I chose working for a first. And I was like, This is a part of me that wanted to go into the theatre world. 119 00:13:27,910 --> 00:13:30,920 I appeased that longing by writing a book about Tom Stoppard. 120 00:13:31,030 --> 00:13:39,990 It's okay. And then after I'd done a two year B film, I decided not to do a DPHIL. 121 00:13:40,810 --> 00:13:43,930 I wanted to get on. 122 00:13:43,930 --> 00:13:49,690 I wanted to earn my living. So I got a fellowship in this in the States in 1970. 123 00:13:49,910 --> 00:13:53,790 My first teaching job. So my first teaching job was when I was 22. 124 00:13:53,800 --> 00:14:04,190 So I did start very young in my profession and have gone on ever since until I retired from the college in 2017. 125 00:14:04,210 --> 00:14:07,780 So it's been a long, a long haul in academic life. 126 00:14:07,780 --> 00:14:13,900 And looking back, I kind of wish I'd taken a break or done other things maybe for a couple of years, 127 00:14:13,910 --> 00:14:16,900 but what do you think you've learnt from just going straight into that? 128 00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:26,110 I was very eager to carry on the kinds of conversations I've been having as a student, but with others, 129 00:14:26,320 --> 00:14:32,290 with students that I could teach, you know, to about my literary, you know, what I knew? 130 00:14:32,530 --> 00:14:36,270 I was very, very keen to. Pass on. 131 00:14:38,110 --> 00:14:45,210 This knowledge and thinking. And, uh, and yeah, I was, I was keen to write. 132 00:14:45,980 --> 00:14:52,000 Um, and keen to have a regular employment which would allow me to write books as well. 133 00:14:53,200 --> 00:15:01,990 Well, that quite nicely. Brings me on to your second pivot point, that of agreeing to write a biography of Virginia Woolf in 1989. 134 00:15:03,130 --> 00:15:13,510 How did that come about? Was that something that you were always interested in? I've been in academics since 1970, and I was then in the eighties. 135 00:15:13,510 --> 00:15:18,610 I was at the University of York and I'd done a lot of reviewing, 136 00:15:18,610 --> 00:15:27,100 and I had a television books programme on Channel four for quite a bit of time during the eighties, 137 00:15:27,370 --> 00:15:35,610 and I'd written four books by then, one of which was a critical book on on Virginia Woolf, and these were literary critical books. 138 00:15:35,620 --> 00:15:39,490 And I was asked in fact, I was asked twice. 139 00:15:39,940 --> 00:15:48,160 I was asked by a publisher, HRH or something like that to write a new biography of Virginia Woolf that had been the big standard, 140 00:15:48,520 --> 00:15:52,510 well-loved biography by her nephew, Quentin Bell, which was the kind of. 141 00:15:55,040 --> 00:16:01,090 That was the sort of mark for Virginia Woolf studies. And I said, No, I thought it was a ridiculous idea. 142 00:16:01,100 --> 00:16:04,880 There were 100 books on Virginia Woolf, and I couldn't see any point in doing this again. 143 00:16:04,910 --> 00:16:12,260 Why do you think they asked you? Well, then you noticed again by a person who's had a lot of influence on my life, 144 00:16:12,260 --> 00:16:18,200 a very remarkable person called Carmen Carlisle, who had been the founder and editor of Virago Press. 145 00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:19,609 And I've done some work for her. 146 00:16:19,610 --> 00:16:31,489 And she was then the director of Chatto and Windus, who ever since then had been my main publisher and come and asked me to do this. 147 00:16:31,490 --> 00:16:39,140 And I thought, well, if to lots of people think it's time for a new Life of Virginia Woolf and if to lots of people think that I could do it. 148 00:16:39,980 --> 00:16:45,650 And if Carmen in particular, who's an astonishing force of energy and creativity and decisiveness, 149 00:16:45,650 --> 00:16:52,310 willpower and feminist enterprise, I think that it should be me then I should say yes. 150 00:16:53,390 --> 00:16:57,530 But why did they think it should be? I don't know. 151 00:16:57,570 --> 00:17:05,320 I suppose they thought I was interested in Virginia Woolf and I could write and that I might be able to write a biography. 152 00:17:05,330 --> 00:17:10,850 I mean, the I think the two you know, there's two things about this that I look back on is that. 153 00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:15,600 Of people often say to me, How do you learn to be a biographer? 154 00:17:15,810 --> 00:17:19,680 Hmm. And of course, you did learn to be a biographer. You learn by doing it. 155 00:17:20,010 --> 00:17:25,310 And that is the case with most jobs. I mean, I take it that's what you're doing now in this job. 156 00:17:25,320 --> 00:17:29,310 You learn by doing it. You don't know whether you can do it till you leave, till you are doing it. 157 00:17:29,880 --> 00:17:37,720 So there was that. I think I was also rather out of tune with what was happening in English studies in the 1980s. 158 00:17:37,760 --> 00:17:47,190 I think I was rather out of tune with critical theory and with deconstruction and with the French based theories of the death of the author. 159 00:17:49,260 --> 00:17:52,980 And I found it becoming increasingly alien to me, actually. 160 00:17:53,400 --> 00:18:01,890 And so writing a life of a writer in whose life I was very interested in, which was a difficult life to write because it was very contested. 161 00:18:02,310 --> 00:18:07,740 And it is usually people have very strong feelings, pro and con. 162 00:18:07,740 --> 00:18:18,510 Virginia Woolf was it was exactly the kind of challenge I wanted and maybe Common recognise that this would work for me. 163 00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:27,660 So I think it's, I think, as it were, the moral of the story that I tell myself is being willing to jump and take on. 164 00:18:28,960 --> 00:18:35,170 You know what to me was a big challenge. I mean, we're not talking about, you know, running the country or climbing a mountain. 165 00:18:35,200 --> 00:18:38,500 This is a quiet life we're talking about. 166 00:18:38,710 --> 00:18:43,030 But nonetheless, these are big these are big challenges within one's own life. 167 00:18:43,030 --> 00:18:47,380 And that was a massive I had a lot of apprehension and a lot of fear. 168 00:18:49,570 --> 00:18:54,160 I was scared of not being able to do it. I was scared of not being intelligent enough for them. 169 00:18:54,970 --> 00:19:05,440 And I was scared of not finding my way into into the right shape for the book because she herself was so deeply critical of conventions, 170 00:19:05,440 --> 00:19:12,129 of biography and constantly writing about how the conventional biography simply escape to the surface. 171 00:19:12,130 --> 00:19:18,400 And you never get to the heart of the person. And I wanted to try and find a way of doing it that I thought would. 172 00:19:18,430 --> 00:19:22,989 So I kind of reinvented the form of biography a little bit in my in my own way. 173 00:19:22,990 --> 00:19:29,160 This is now a very common thing to do, but it wasn't a sort of standard cradle to grave operation, as it were. 174 00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:32,290 So I think. 175 00:19:33,510 --> 00:19:42,030 I think looking back, it was about taking being willing to jump and try something new and also taking the opportunities that come your way. 176 00:19:42,330 --> 00:19:49,050 Most of the big decisions, pivot points in my life actually have come at me rather than me going for them. 177 00:19:49,260 --> 00:19:54,660 And it's a curious thing and I sort of look back on this and think, you know, I should have made more decisions. 178 00:19:56,160 --> 00:20:03,660 The decisions, I suppose, have been knowing when to take your chance, knowing when to take your opportunity because they don't come around again. 179 00:20:03,760 --> 00:20:10,260 Yeah. And in what way did writing that biography either confirm or change your identity as a woman? 180 00:20:11,160 --> 00:20:20,130 Deeply changed my identity as a as a woman, as a writer, as an academic, as a professional person in my in my field. 181 00:20:21,510 --> 00:20:25,770 Because. It made me think about. 182 00:20:27,070 --> 00:20:30,910 A great woman's life very, very hard, very carefully. 183 00:20:31,210 --> 00:20:39,280 And I was, as it were, re-evaluating it in the sense that anyone who writes a big biography of a major figure who is a sort 184 00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:45,939 of contested figure is always going to be writing it from the point of view of their their education, 185 00:20:45,940 --> 00:20:50,830 their race, their nationality, their gender. 186 00:20:51,250 --> 00:20:58,120 You know, you bring to it what you are, but you also change by encountering that life. 187 00:20:58,120 --> 00:21:04,400 And it made me think about. The terrible battle that she had between. 188 00:21:08,380 --> 00:21:12,310 Ferocious creative commitment to doing what she wanted to do. 189 00:21:12,310 --> 00:21:18,790 Knew she needed to do. And terrible problems with physical and mental illness. 190 00:21:19,090 --> 00:21:25,780 And just thinking about that battle was, to me, very energising, actually. 191 00:21:25,980 --> 00:21:32,500 Mean, you know, I think it's a heroic story, actually. And maybe there's something in me that likes heroes. 192 00:21:32,710 --> 00:21:37,420 Yeah, I think I always have liked heroes and wanted to create. 193 00:21:37,420 --> 00:21:40,480 It is not as a sentimental story, but as a heroic story. 194 00:21:40,750 --> 00:21:46,120 So all of that was very important. And then in professional terms, it opened a lot of doors to me. 195 00:21:46,130 --> 00:21:51,970 And it was a it was it was well received when it came out in 96. 196 00:21:51,970 --> 00:22:00,490 And I think out of that came my appointment as Goldsmiths Chair New College here in 1998. 197 00:22:00,820 --> 00:22:08,680 So it had a very powerful effect on my or my life and then I kind of turned me into a biographer rather than principally a literary critic. 198 00:22:08,860 --> 00:22:16,180 Yeah. And in what way do you think your academic interests changed as you changed throughout your career? 199 00:22:20,030 --> 00:22:25,850 Well, I think I. I don't know quite how to answer that. 200 00:22:25,910 --> 00:22:31,230 I mean, I've had a I've had a long interest in American literature, and my first job was in America. 201 00:22:31,250 --> 00:22:36,860 And I've written a lot about American writers, including Philip Roth and Willa Cather. 202 00:22:36,860 --> 00:22:40,250 And I did a big biography of Edith Wharton. 203 00:22:41,510 --> 00:22:47,560 And that kept pace with my teaching of American literature. 204 00:22:47,570 --> 00:22:54,980 So I suppose as I developed more and more interest in that, that became part of my my writing life as well. 205 00:22:56,240 --> 00:23:05,120 I was thinking, of course, as anybody who ever met the Queen has thought over the last few days about them, you know, 206 00:23:05,150 --> 00:23:13,160 their encounter with the queen and I, I was I got a gong and I went to the palace to get my gong and the queen gave me my government. 207 00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:17,420 She asked me a question and I had been wondering what she was going to ask me. 208 00:23:18,590 --> 00:23:26,770 And she has a gentleman, you know, on her standing on her left who mutters in her ear the name and the job of the person she's about. 209 00:23:26,930 --> 00:23:33,960 Yes, not exactly annoyance, but, you know. Yeah. And she said to me, tell me, how do you combine your writing with your teaching? 210 00:23:34,730 --> 00:23:39,020 And I thought, this is an absolutely brilliant question, and I wonder if she's got half. 211 00:23:39,020 --> 00:23:42,170 And I suspect she could have been a journalist. 212 00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:49,250 Exactly. And so how do you combine your writing with your teaching has been, of course, as it is for so many academics. 213 00:23:49,610 --> 00:23:57,260 The key question and the answer I gave her at the time and looking back, so yeah, I kind of stand by that was they feed into each other. 214 00:23:57,460 --> 00:24:07,730 Hmm. And so I suppose you asked me about how writing that book and writing other books have kept pace with my academic life. 215 00:24:08,090 --> 00:24:18,000 I suppose they have kept pace with the things that I am interested in, but also the writing has not necessarily been tied to the teaching. 216 00:24:18,020 --> 00:24:25,430 So, for instance, I wrote a life of an English novelist called Penelope Fitzgerald, who I think is a genius. 217 00:24:26,420 --> 00:24:31,550 And that that also came at me. The family came and asked me if I would do it, and I said yes, 218 00:24:31,790 --> 00:24:35,480 but that's not somebody I would have been teaching because she's not on any reading list. 219 00:24:35,490 --> 00:24:39,530 So it doesn't always keep pace. Yeah. So do you. 220 00:24:39,950 --> 00:24:47,060 Seeing other people as heroes reminds me of a lovely anecdote that I have from a Wilson alumnus, 221 00:24:47,330 --> 00:24:52,040 Shaharzad Akbar, who I interviewed for Plans and Prospects this summer. 222 00:24:52,520 --> 00:25:01,340 And she said she was obviously here under your presidency, and she said that she essentially worshipped you and the youth. 223 00:25:03,740 --> 00:25:06,550 Yeah, that was the same impression I came away with. 224 00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:14,330 And the reason she worshipped you was that she really saw you was such an incredible example of female leadership. 225 00:25:15,100 --> 00:25:25,270 And I'm wondering if those if if that as a role came naturally to you and how much you took from other people who use or is your heroes? 226 00:25:26,270 --> 00:25:30,470 I I'm very touched and moved to hear about that from Shahzad. 227 00:25:30,490 --> 00:25:40,420 In fact, Shahzad gave me the idea for this is not unlike pivot points for something I set up, but also while I was here, which was a life stories day. 228 00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,460 So, so many people in this college from all over the world. 229 00:25:43,900 --> 00:25:50,820 And you've only got to sit down next to them at lunch for 5 minutes, you know, and I always used to go and have lunch with the students. 230 00:25:50,830 --> 00:25:56,290 And I was when I was here and I would just listen to their what they had to tell me, really. 231 00:25:57,310 --> 00:26:02,170 And she said that when she'd been at Smith, they'd have this day where people told that story in some form. 232 00:26:02,170 --> 00:26:06,850 It could be a dance or a poem, music or an anecdote for 4 minutes. 233 00:26:07,360 --> 00:26:10,630 And I would just came out. And so I stole that idea. 234 00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:16,160 And so yes. And of course, Shahzad's career is just absolutely extraordinary. 235 00:26:16,210 --> 00:26:19,540 She's a role model for many, many people. Yes. 236 00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:23,049 And I'm terribly glad that she's attached to that. Going to be attached to the college. 237 00:26:23,050 --> 00:26:36,190 It's marvellous for us. And yes, I suppose for my own life, much less dramatically when I got the when I was appointed as the Goldsmith's chair in 98. 238 00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:42,740 One of the pleasures of that for me was that I was the first woman to take that chair. 239 00:26:43,120 --> 00:26:49,959 And since then, my successor was the late Laura marcus, who's very much mourned and very much missed. 240 00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:55,440 But it was wonderful for me that she took that battle over from me. 241 00:26:55,450 --> 00:27:05,809 And similarly, when I came here in 2008, having done that job for ten years, I was the first woman who'd been appointed to be President Wilson. 242 00:27:05,810 --> 00:27:12,220 And at that time, although things I'm glad to say have rapidly changed over the last 15 years or so, 243 00:27:12,460 --> 00:27:16,720 and I work that many women heads of houses in Oxford. 244 00:27:16,750 --> 00:27:22,560 I mean, I think there were six of us or eight of us out of whatever, just thirtysomething. 245 00:27:23,110 --> 00:27:27,550 And so that's changed a lot, I think is now half and half. 246 00:27:27,670 --> 00:27:31,370 Yeah, which is great. But I, yeah, I felt like a bit of a pioneer. 247 00:27:31,660 --> 00:27:36,639 And one of my great friends and role models in that was Margaret Macmillan, 248 00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:44,710 who was then head of St News and who was also, like me, combining writing books whilst running a college. 249 00:27:45,070 --> 00:27:46,990 And how do you feel Wilson has changed since then. 250 00:27:50,650 --> 00:28:01,170 I, I think that what I needed to do when I came to Wilson and this is my third pivot point, which is the moment when I decided to accept the, 251 00:28:01,610 --> 00:28:06,850 the job here, which was not an entirely easy decision because I did, after all, have this very fine chair. 252 00:28:07,300 --> 00:28:13,390 And had I been a named chair at Cambridge, I could have kept my name chair and run the college. 253 00:28:13,390 --> 00:28:15,459 But the Oxford system is very different, I think, 254 00:28:15,460 --> 00:28:21,930 because Oxford asks much more of its heads of houses perhaps in terms of sort of it being a full time job. 255 00:28:22,120 --> 00:28:25,720 I would have liked to do both. Yeah. And that was so. 256 00:28:25,740 --> 00:28:35,560 So giving that up was sort of unheard of. I mean, people didn't give up the Goldsmiths chair and there were I was aware that there was a lot of. 257 00:28:37,050 --> 00:28:41,720 Some astonishment and some amazement that I had done this, 258 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:54,100 that I had given up a very prestigious academic post in order to run a college and not a grand old Oxford College, which, you know, ever changing. 259 00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:59,190 Relatively young, very on Oxford e kind of college in many ways. 260 00:28:59,460 --> 00:29:03,170 So I was aware that I was creating ripples. That's not why I did it. 261 00:29:03,540 --> 00:29:08,850 But I could see that that was a side effect. And I could see also that. 262 00:29:10,550 --> 00:29:22,240 Wilson. Could change, you know, that it's that its character needed to be cherished and kept going. 263 00:29:23,430 --> 00:29:30,150 And enriched all the time. But there were things it could do that it didn't already have. 264 00:29:30,570 --> 00:29:34,570 Like an auditorium. Hmm. Like a cafe. 265 00:29:34,590 --> 00:29:39,460 Like an extension to the library. Like the academic clusters. 266 00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:45,960 I mean, there were. There was lots of work going on, particularly in the classical and linguistics area. 267 00:29:47,190 --> 00:29:51,560 But there were all kinds of energies that could be channelled. 268 00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:55,160 And so I think what I and this may have changed things a bit. 269 00:29:55,170 --> 00:30:00,660 I think I think what I tried to do was to ask everybody on the governing body. 270 00:30:01,730 --> 00:30:10,160 Who could, too, to switch a little percentage of what they were doing more towards the college, 271 00:30:10,670 --> 00:30:16,940 you know, to just wrangle some of what they were doing so that it took a college woods direction. 272 00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:26,030 And to make the most of the remarkable fact that you have all these different interests and different specialisms and different forms of scholarship, 273 00:30:26,030 --> 00:30:30,850 and to make those intermingle perhaps a bit more than they had been before, 274 00:30:30,860 --> 00:30:35,510 I don't think there had been a huge amount going on in that direction before I arrived. 275 00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:41,060 So I think it was a sort of expanding of the plant and and. 276 00:30:42,070 --> 00:30:46,810 Invigorating, perhaps, or enlivening of what was actually going on inside the college. 277 00:30:46,850 --> 00:30:49,470 Hmm. And then. I. 278 00:30:49,740 --> 00:30:59,070 You aren't yourself aware of being a role model or a hero, and you would be a ridiculous person if you thought of yourself in those terms. 279 00:30:59,310 --> 00:31:04,470 But I suppose the fact that I was the first woman that I that I did sort of commit to the job, 280 00:31:04,740 --> 00:31:10,650 I did spend a lot of time in the college in that I did sort of turn up and have lunch with people, 281 00:31:11,310 --> 00:31:12,360 students, I mean, 282 00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:21,780 and had a lot of inter-relationship with the students in terms of creating their life stories day and the President's seminars and things like that. 283 00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:27,270 I suppose that was well looked on. Yeah, I think that was I think that made people feel cheerful. 284 00:31:27,300 --> 00:31:29,160 Yeah. And what do you think? 285 00:31:30,060 --> 00:31:36,570 What do you think it was about your personality, you as family, that brought those things to this role and have that impact? 286 00:31:36,750 --> 00:31:42,090 I find it embarrassing to talk about myself in that self analytical way, 287 00:31:42,090 --> 00:31:50,309 which is why I'm not going to write an autobiography and why I'm really hoping that the biography you write. 288 00:31:50,310 --> 00:31:53,640 What about you? But I suppose. 289 00:31:56,450 --> 00:32:04,870 I'm interested in other people. Yes. I mean, I want to know what they're doing and I want to know what's going to happen to them. 290 00:32:04,870 --> 00:32:11,620 And I want to know why they're doing what they're doing. And so I suppose it's partly just general nosiness. 291 00:32:12,370 --> 00:32:17,450 So is it deeply uncomfortable for you to be the one being to these horrible fires? 292 00:32:21,730 --> 00:32:28,810 I'm also wondering that and so we've talked we've talked about people who, for you, felt like heroes and people that you worshipped in the past. 293 00:32:29,050 --> 00:32:34,420 Who is there somebody in your life like that now? My, how you lived through that was lovely. 294 00:32:36,130 --> 00:32:39,280 I never. I never finished the story of coming to Wolfson, actually. 295 00:32:39,630 --> 00:32:50,860 Hmm. So, talking of heroes, one of the people who led me into the main person, actually, who led me into Wilson was a colleague of mine named Shorty, 296 00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:52,660 who was the poet John Storey, 297 00:32:52,690 --> 00:33:00,610 who had been who was then acting president after the death of the previous president and who had been acting president before. 298 00:33:00,610 --> 00:33:05,050 And I knew him very well. And he and I had no. 299 00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:13,710 Intention or desire of becoming a head of house. I had been approached before and I thought, No, this is not at all what I want to do. 300 00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,290 I had done ten years as Goldsmiths Chair. 301 00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:26,280 I was turning 60. And I was very intrigued by the thought that. 302 00:33:27,370 --> 00:33:30,370 I could do a different job in my sixties. 303 00:33:30,940 --> 00:33:38,080 I liked the idea of trying to do something that I didn't know I could do at that period of my life, 304 00:33:38,410 --> 00:33:42,580 because I knew that I could perfectly well go on doing all the things I could do 305 00:33:42,610 --> 00:33:47,919 teaching and writing and giving papers at conferences and all the rest of it. 306 00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:54,300 And that would perfectly well last me till what was what due to be my retirement age, which was 67 then. 307 00:33:54,310 --> 00:34:00,280 And so coming to the college would give me a little more lease of life as well, because I actually didn't have to. 308 00:34:00,820 --> 00:34:05,920 I mean, I chose to retire after nine years, partly because I was in the middle of a big book I wanted to finish. 309 00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:12,800 And also because I thought. There's a point where you feel, okay, someone needs to come in and freshen this up now. 310 00:34:13,250 --> 00:34:15,500 You know it's time to pass the baton. Yes. 311 00:34:15,830 --> 00:34:22,430 So you just feel that yourself and you kind of you kind of begin to get the feeling that, you know, you want to quit while you're ahead. 312 00:34:22,700 --> 00:34:26,300 You don't want people to be asking you if they want if you'd like to spend more time with your family. 313 00:34:28,850 --> 00:34:32,420 And there's just a moment where it starts to feel a little bit repetitive. 314 00:34:32,750 --> 00:34:37,970 You think, okay, I'm back on this annual cycle. Now we do this, now we do this, and it isn't. 315 00:34:38,240 --> 00:34:46,700 And also, you've done the kind of. The group of key things that you wanted to do, which was in my case, you know, 316 00:34:47,090 --> 00:34:54,670 fundraise to get this building built and also be very involved with the design of this building, which was a very exciting thing for me. 317 00:34:54,680 --> 00:35:01,909 I'd never worked with architects before. And so, yes, so I decided to, to, to go after nine years. 318 00:35:01,910 --> 00:35:07,430 But when I started, I really liked the thought that I would be learning to do things. 319 00:35:09,010 --> 00:35:17,040 That I had no idea how to do. I mean, I you know, I'd done some big administrative jobs, but I hadn't run an institution before. 320 00:35:17,050 --> 00:35:18,880 And it was a very exciting thing to do. 321 00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:27,300 And you learnt that you were going to do things like fundraising, which I hadn't done so much of before in my life, and that, 322 00:35:27,460 --> 00:35:33,070 you know, obviously you have a the first thing I did was to appoint a development director, which I hadn't been here. 323 00:35:33,220 --> 00:35:37,840 Mm hmm. And, you know, we worked very well together, and that went very well. 324 00:35:37,850 --> 00:35:42,490 But it's it's not something. Again, it's something you learn how to do by doing. 325 00:35:42,580 --> 00:35:45,900 Yes. Yeah. And what's next for you? 326 00:35:46,770 --> 00:35:55,050 Oh, I'm just in the early stages of my next book, which is a life of the art historian and novelist Anita Brookner. 327 00:35:55,680 --> 00:36:03,059 And I'm deeply buried in all her writings at the moment, and I've given myself a very nice, 328 00:36:03,060 --> 00:36:08,910 easy, long deadline for what is going to be a relatively short book for me, 329 00:36:09,180 --> 00:36:21,989 because I thought, well, not more than 300 pages, as opposed to the last one, which weighed considerably more than was a big life of Tom Stoppard. 330 00:36:21,990 --> 00:36:28,230 Although I had the opportunity to work with him and I thought, Well, it's a big life and I might as well do the whole thing. 331 00:36:28,370 --> 00:36:32,220 It was a great big book and it was a lot of work and it took me six years. 332 00:36:32,270 --> 00:36:35,460 Yeah. And it came out during lockdown. Yeah. 333 00:36:35,540 --> 00:36:41,670 But so I'm taking life a little bit easier, but I'm still writing. 334 00:36:41,910 --> 00:36:46,770 That's great. Well, I hope this one takes you considerably shorter length of time in six years. 335 00:36:48,930 --> 00:36:52,200 Thank you so much for coming. A great pleasure. Thank you for all the good questions.