Principal's Blog: 26th February 2026

Principal’s Blog

Sorry to my loyal band of readers (I know who you are) for the gap since the last edition of the blog but this term has been unusually busy.

Principals Conversations: Joanna Kavenna & Nick Timothy

Joanna Kavenna the author and our former Frankland Visitor took part in one of our best ever Principals Conversation, mainly on the subject of AI. Her sixth novel, Seven (Or, How to Play a Game Without Rules), was published this year. For the novel, she invented a faux-ancient board game, Seven. I thought it was actually a real game for the first 100 pages. The unnamed protagonist is sent to Hydra by an Icelandic philosopher to learn more about the board game from one Theódoros Apostolakis, a poet and dentist, who is obsessed with the fictional game of Seven. Joanna says that she wrote much of the novel Seven while Frankland Visitor – and greatly inspired by the wonderful interdisciplinary environment at BNC. Fellows also had a terrific discussion with Alwyn Collinson from the central University about AI over lunch.

Nick Timothy also did a great Principals Conversation on 12 February. He is a true Tory intellectual and covered what his party needed to do to be elected again. He spoke of an economic model which had run out of road and a UK national identity which was weaker than ever. He said that his party “needed to own the things we got wrong”.

Organ recitals galore

On 21 February we held a dinner to bid a fond farewell and a warm thank you to Nigel Wightman who has led our Investment Advisory Committee for 20 years with great distinction and success in uncertain times. We were treated to a wonderful organ concert by Anne Page before the dinner. She is one of the most distinguished organists in the UK at present. She played works by Bach, Handel, Rogg and Lemmens. It showed the great versatility of our new organ for which we again salute the generosity of Gerald and Margo Smith. Gerald is also a member of the IAC.

The series of Organ Recitals organised by Alex Flood our Interim Director of Music continues and has been a great success. Edward Bence of Oriel performed on 29 January playing Camillo Schumann’s Sonata 6 in A minor Op 110, and we welcomed Augustine Cox from Trinity College, Cambridge, on 12 February playing Purcell, Alain, Whitlock and Ropek. The ‘home team’ were represented by our Junior Organ Scholar, Simeon Wren, on 26 February, and first-year mathematician Jude Young on 12 March, who is also Junior Organ Scholar at St Peter’s College.

Ale Verses and other music

One of the great joys of this time of the year is the Ale Verses which takes place at dinner on Shrove Tuesday. Our students are extremely versatile and know songs by groups of whom I have never heard. The winning song this year was set to the tune of Country Roads by John Denver of which I had heard. It included the immortal lines “All my Nostrils gather round here, Good old Andy and big man Bowers”. It was a bumper year for songs and any of six could have been the winner.

One of the most memorable Platnauer Concerts during my Principalship took place on 6 February. It was by Classico Latino, a five person group whose work was subtitled “Discovering music from the Latin American songbook”. The blurb announced that “Latin America has found a unique variety in the expression of the innate musicianship of its people, taking influences from indigenous communities and from each successive wave of immigrants, from the time of the conquistadors to the present day”. And it was much more, a truly gorgeous display of musicianship. I was also delighted to find that the leader was a lawyer in his day job.

We were also treated to a splendid concert of music for violin and piano on 7 March. Rising star Sharon Zhou was accompanied by our own Jonathan Katz in music by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, and Debussy, to a rapturous reception from a capacity audience who were rewarded with Paganini’s ‘Cantabile’ as an encore.

The SCR has been busy too. It welcomed Paul Christopher Walton who read Modern History at BNC. He is famous for writing Bluff Your Way in Marketing and helping unleash Quorn upon an unsuspecting world. Paul’s talk, ‘Beyond the Orange Glow? Poetry and the Power of Place’, was a highly personal and entertaining mash-up of topography, history, and brands — featuring at least six poems.

An anniversary

I found this on a commemoration website:

“On 16 February 1963, the Beatles played at the Carfax Assembly Rooms, to the right of the present HSBC bank. The assembly rooms were reached via a side passage. The downstairs premises were small and used for meetings, while the upstairs room where dances were held was larger. Afterwards Jeffrey Archer, future novelist, Conservative Party politician, and peer, but never a matriculated member of Oxford University, invited the boys to the principal’s lodging at Brasenose. Also present was future theatre critic Sheridan Morley, then a student at Merton, who recalls: ‘I went to the toilet, and there beside me was Ringo Starr. He asked if I knew this Jeffrey Archer bloke. I said everyone in Oxford was trying to work out who he was. Ringo said: “He strikes me as a nice enough fella, but he’s the kind of bloke who would bottle your p*ss and sell it.”’

We have in the Lodgings a grainy photo of the visit.