A specialist consultancy providing bespoke advice and creative solutions for complex cultural, ethical, and religious issues in contemporary geopolitics.
Oxford House Research publishes weekly briefing papers on topical and global issues authored by associates and a range of external contributors. Members receive these by email each week.
By late February 2020 it was clear COVID–19 was going to be disruptive, and not just to our international travels. Broadcasts reported graphically of death and destruction in Italy, a far more familiar and immediate place to most Americans than the three-city megapolis of Wuhan, China, whose struggles gripped us in January. Even the optimistic […]
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Scholars – and not a few wits – have debated for decades the definition (and importance) of a literary ‘classic’. In a 1900 lecture, ‘Disappearance of Literature’, the American author Mark Twain (1835-1900), who was always ready with an incisive quip, quoted a contemporary academic’s view that a classic is ‘something that everybody wants to […]
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Ernest Hemingway’s (1899-1961) novel about the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), takes its title from a meditation by a former Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, John Donne (1572-1631; Meditation XVII of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions). The poem ends with the poignant lines (mod. transl.): ‘And therefore never send to […]
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In a world of corrupted ‘news’ (see Weekly Briefing, 5 October 2020) speech writers have a vital role. Their job is to anticipate – and redirect – editorial agendas with timely one-liners. Sir Ronald Millar (1919-1998) – by profession an actor, script writer and dramatist – had been British PM Margaret Thatcher’s (1925-2013) speech writer […]
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The twists and turns of this year’s US Presidential Election are keeping commentators and electors unusually busy. Industries and individuals whose livelihoods depend on making and selling ‘news’ are delighted, of course. We don’t need them to tell us more is to come! Our world is full, overfull surely, of what is still (presumptuously or […]
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The satirical, politically-engaged essayist, and Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) – known by many for his mythical tale Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – memorably declared on one occasion: ‘We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.’ His words have always seemed to […]
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I am delighted to introduce Dr. Mark Hijleh to you as the author of this week’s Oxford House ‘Weekly Briefing’. Mark is Provost of The King’s College, New York and an Associate of Oxford House, specialising in music and culture. With degrees from John Hopkins University, the University of Sheffield (UK), Ithaca College and William […]
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Some people are making money out of COVID-19: many are not. Depending on their field, some researchers have never known it so good: others are out of a job. Investment in finding an effective vaccine against coronavirus is a plausible priority. Pharmaceutical companies, like on-line marketing and food suppliers, producers of PPE, cleaning products and […]
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Biography, yes: autobiography, I am not so sure. The cult of ‘celebrity’ is now so diffuse and indiscriminate that even minor luminaries are, it seems, paid – or willing! – to spill all in the pages of shiny covered books (usually with rather corny or racy titles). I can understand the value and attraction of […]
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The curse uttered three times in Act III.1 of Shakespeare’s (1564-1614) tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1597), ‘A plague o’ both your houses’ (when Mercutio is stabbed by Juliet’s Capulet cousin Tybalt), has become an icon of Western nihilism (life has no meaning or values). Sometimes translated ‘a pox on both your houses’, the words give […]
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