We are programmed to move. To survive in a harsh environment full of natural and human obstacles and enemies, early humans not only had to run, but also walk, balance, jump, crawl, climb, lift, carry, throw and catch things. Our ancestors routinely moved more than we do now: more people worked physically harder in their…
I have no reliable tip for the Kirkgate Handicap, which is run at 2:30 at Ripon on Thursday 8 June, and, since I know that’s the case, it’s probably sensible to avoid predictions for the General Election on the same day. Indeed, as regular readers of this blog will know, I was intending to source my online…
At noon, on 16 September 1920, an angry Italian anarchist named Mario Buda stopped a horse-drawn wagon near lunchtime crowds on Wall Street in New York, just across the street from the headquarters of the J P Morgan bank. Inside the wagon were a hundred pounds of dynamite and five hundred pounds of heavy cast-iron sash weights.…
Chairing the Teaching Excellence Framework panel means that I have done a good deal of thinking this year about teaching and learning in universities. I’ve had to work through quantitative and qualitative data on teaching in almost all the nation’s universities and the further education colleges offering higher education provision. It has been a fabulous…
The English Civil War was at its height in 1645. It was a dreadfully destructive conflict – recent estimates are that a greater proportion of the male population was killed or wounded in the Civil War than in the First World War 250 years later. The numbers were much smaller, but the proportion larger. And…
We all have them. Some weeks are full of challenges and problems in which nothing goes quite right and the unexpected shocks outnumber the unanticipated surprises. It means that by Friday lunchtime we are looking at the clock and waiting to get through to the relative safety of Friday night and the weekend. I had…
By all accounts, the Prime Minister will trigger the formal notification of the UK’s intention to leave the European Union on Wednesday this week. It will open a tortuous series of negotiations and, barring unforeseen eventualities, means that the UK will leave the EU in the Spring of 2019. There is some legal disagreement about…
There’s a scene in Annie Hall where the Woody Allen character recalls his elementary school classroom. The film transports him back to the classroom as his adult self, surrounded by his classmates as the children he remembers. He wonders what happened to them. In turn, the young pupils stand up and voice what has happened…
Philanthropy is one of the UK’s great traditions. As Shirley Pearce’s report on philanthropy in higher education points out, from medieval through Victorian to modern times, generous donations have facilitated the development of academic institutions. Philanthropy enabled them to become internationally successful and to play their part in economic, social and cultural success. But if…
The days are lengthening. It’s now almost daylight when I leave the house in the morning, and the garden is turning green – bluebells are appearing across all the beds in the garden. We inherited them from the previous owners and they are the highly invasive Spanish variety, which are almost impossible to control. But…