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Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill

Posted in Cricket, Literature with tags , , on October 30, 2026 by telescoper

I bought the book Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill, ages ago when I was still living in Cardiff, around 2010, but somehow I never got around to reading it until now. It’s an intriguing book, written by an Irishman about a Dutchman who spends his life between London and New York, and who loves cricket. I don’t know why I put off reading it for so long, but I definitely recommend it. It’s full of vivid descriptions of places and acutely observed people.

The jacket blurb for this novel does give the impression that it is some sort of murder mystery involved, and it the story is in a sense stimulated by the discovery of the body in a New York canal found with its hands tied behind its back. This event provokes the narrator and principal protagonist, Hans van den Broek, to reflect on the time he spent in New York in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The man in the canal was Chuck Ramkissoon, a larger-than-life self-styled “businessman” who had befriended Hans in those days. They had met through a common interest in cricket; Chuck had grandiose plans to build a cricket stadium in New York. The narrative unfolds in flashbacks, partly about Hans’s childhood in The Hague, partly in London working in the City, partly about the ups and downs of his marriage to a lawyer called Rachel, and partly about Chuck Ramkissoon. We gradually realize that Chuck is a very shady character, perhaps more of a gangster than a businessman, whose death was probably gang-related.

But while these topic are woven into the narrative, Netherland is not really about them. It is really a contemplation of memory and personality and relationships and how these things are changed by events that you can’t control. I dare say many people found themselves and those to whom they were close unaccountably changed by 9/11. The novel probes the narrator’s sense of alienation as he comes to terms with the fact that while in New York he is in a kind of exile from himself. That sense is elevated by the way the narrative jumps backwards and forwards, as if the narrator is searching his memories for things to hold on to.

Most people in this novel, including the narrator, his wife Rachel, Chuck Ramkissoon, and a host of minor characters are basically unknowable and the author’s relationships with them always ambivalent. The only really constant factor are his love for his young son, Jake – the understated expressions of the unconditional affection he feels for his little boy are very moving – and for cricket. What I thought would be a murder mystery, actually turned out to be a kind of love story…

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Oysters and Bones

Posted in Biographical, Education, History, Irish Language, Literature with tags , , , on October 20, 2026 by telescoper

A post on Bluesky got me thinking about the origin of the word “oyster”, which I shall bore you with shortly, but the post asks an interesting question about the well-known phrase “The World’s Mine Oyster”. This comes from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and is spoken to Falstaff by Pistol, a swaggering soldier, in the line:

Why, then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.

The meaning it has there is that Pistol thinks he can get whatever he wants by force of arms. In more modern usage, however, it is taken to mean that the speaker has everything on a plate. In modern usage it sometimes appears as “the world is your oyster” which means something like “take your pick”. At some point, it is claimed in the 20th Century, this meaning of this phrase changed. There’s a podcast about this here. How, where and why this happened I don’t know, and I don’t know who does. My usual source for information about things like this is the wonderful Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable which has the phrase but sheds no light on its change of meaning. If you can shed light on this, please feel free to comment below through the box below.

Anyway, having had oysters in Ireland a few times – with Guinness, obviously- but not knowing the word in the Irish language, I looked it up: it is oisre. Interestingly close, I thought. So then I looked at the etymology of the English word oyster. This first appeared in Middle English via the Latin ostrea (and probably Norman French). The Latin word is derived from the Classical Greek ὄστρεον (ostreon), which is the origin of many words connected with bone, e.g. osteopath and ossuary. This is presumably because it was thought oyster shells were made of bone or at least bony in appearance.

Just for a laugh, here’s a mediaeval representation of an oyster from a Bestiary:

Incidentally, the Romans used ostrea for mussels as well as oysters. This reminds me of my first year at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle when we had a history teacher whose name escapes me but whose initials – from and old school report I still have – were `BM’ and who possessed a strong Scottish accent. In the first year we learnt a little bit about the Roman invasion of Britain. BM explained that one of the reasons the Romans came to Britain was that they were looking for “perils”. Although confused, I wrote that down unquestioningly in my exercise book. After the lesson was over I asked a classmate about it and he told me the teacher had meant “pearls”. These were very prized in Rome, and there was a rumour circulating there that they were abundant in Britain. But not in oysters. Freshwater mussels were the source of the perils pearls. I guess the Romans used the same word anyway.

Meanwhile, back at the oysters, I find that the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) word is ostre. This might itself have been borrowed from the Latin, but we know that the ancient Britons were eating oysters long before the Romans arrived. In fact, there are shell middens dating back to the mesolithic period. It seemed to me quite possible, therefore, that the word oyster may predate Classical Latin, and even Greek. The similarity of the Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon words may be because they are both linked to Latin, but look at the word for oyster in other languages, German: Auster, Danish østers, Polish: ostryga, etc. Like words for many things with which Europeans have been familiar with for a very long time indeed, could this one have a proto-Indo-European root? I recently read a fascinating book about this and was captivated by the idea of some of our ancient ancestors, thousands of years ago, eating oysters and using a very similar word to describe them.

It seems it does, but the common ancestor is a word not meaning “oyster” directly but “bone”. The Sanskrit word for “bone” is अस्थि (ásthi), which convinces me of its Indo-European origins. It was perhaps the Greeks, or their ancestors, who first adapted this word to refer to an oyster as a “bony thing”.

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Dark Academia – How Universities Die, by Peter Fleming

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Literature with tags , , , , on October 18, 2026 by telescoper

I ordered this book from our local bookshop a while ago but have only just found time to finish reading it. It’s an analysis of the decline of the neoliberal model of the university accompanied by the rise of commercialisation, managerialism and authoritarian models of governance. At 165 pages, not counting the notes and references, it’s a concise and compelling polemic, full of controlled anger and sprinkled with sardonic wit.

The problem I have in reviewing it is that almost every page contains something that rings so true that I’d want to include a quote. There wouldn’t be any point in doing that as I’d end up quoting almost the entire book, so I decided just to include one excerpt, part of a paragraph in the introduction:

Impersonal and unforgiving management hierarchies have supplanted academic judgement, collegiality and professional common sense. in many institutions, senior executives have no PhDs and have been trained in business or the military instead. Mindless performance targets dominate teaching and research to the point of caricature, designed by functionaries who’ve never taught a class or written a research article in their lives. Unfortunately, these hierarchies have become notoriously bossy. Coercion rather than volition compels much academic labour today, even tasks that scholars would have otherwise done willingly because it’s central to their vocation. This surfeit of duress, most of which is unnecessary and counterproductive, is a defining feature of the corporate university.

The book charts the rise of this fanatical managerialism, the consequent fall of academic institutions as places of education, scholarship and research, and their replacement by soulless teaching factories. I’ve been an academic for almost forty years and I’ve seen this process unfold in real time. As I approach retirement, I deeply regret that I didn’t do more to stop it.

Dark Academia was written around the time of the Covid-19 pandemic and published in 2021 so it does not cover the dreadful collapse of higher education in the UK since then. The author does make some presciently pessimistic comments, but the reality has turned out to be far worse than he imagined.

My own experience of the pandemic here in Maynooth illustrates what went on to a greater or lesser extent throughout the university system, namely that it was seen by Management as an opporunity to strengthen its grip. Staff workloads went through the roof as under-resourced departments struggled to deliver adequate teaching. Seeing that we were on our knees, the powers that be decided it was an ideal opportunity to kick us in the teeth. Witholding replacement positions for two lecturers who left at this time, showed a callous disregard for staff morale and student education alike. Needless to say, the person responsible was promoted.

Since the end of the pandemic, the Management of Maynooth University has been led frog-marched down the path towards Dark Academia. The past few years have been a jamboree for senior administrators, with the creation of umpteen new Vice-Presidents on high salaries and extensive perks, such €500,000 on a luxury chauffeur service and €1M on a luxurious new office for the President. This profligate expenditure on management bloat has been accompanied by austerity everywhere else, especially for teaching and research. This new configuration of the University is clearly unsustainable. The only question is whether anything can be salvaged from the wreckage when it crashes.

The term The University used to have a collective meaning, referring to all staff and students, not just the leadership, but now it simply means The University Management. For example, it was rumbled last year that Maynooth University had paid €47,000 tax on the President’s behalf. The President eventually paid the bill and an anonymous spokesperson said “The University now considers this matter resolved”. I know I’m not the only person working at Maynooth who doesn’t consider it “resolved”: for one thing, I’d like to know who made the decision to pay the President’s tax bill in the first place; and for another I’d like to know who issued the statement that it was “resolved”. I mention this episode because it exemplifies a phrase used by Peter Fleming at the end of his book. Academics used to be able to say that that they worked “in” a university. Not any more we don’t. We work “under” a university.

I’m not very optimistic that academia can change for the better – I think it’s too far gone – but this book at least identifies most of what is wrong. Perhaps, if enough of us read it, we can start trying to reverse the decline.

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Sonnet No. 104

Posted in Poetry with tags , on October 14, 2026 by telescoper 
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd:
   For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:
   Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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Return of the Black Shorts

Posted in History, Literature, Politics with tags , , , , , , , , , on September 10, 2026 by telescoper

The above picture shows fascist thug and career criminal Daniel Thomas (a.k.a. Danny Tommo) leading a “protest” of uniformed knuckleheads (those on the right of the picture, in short trousers) outside the Daily Mail offices in London.

Fans of P.G. Wodehouse will recall Roderick Spode, the 7th Earl of Sidcup, who leads a fascist group called the “Saviours of Britain” also known as the Black Shorts. He is of course a parody of Oswald Mosley and his group a parody of Mosley’s Black Shirts (aka the British Union of Fascists).

Here’s a relevant quotation from The Code of the Woosters (published in 1938):

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.

How prescient was that?

Incidentally, fans of historical trivia might be interested to know that the grandson of Oswald Mosley (founder of the British Union of Fascists) and Diane Mitford (a friend of Adolf Hitler, who married Oswald Mosley at the home of Joseph Goebbels) is Louis Mosley, CEO of Palantir UK.

Coincidentally, Nigel Farage went to the same school as P.G. Wodehouse, Dulwich College.

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Grinds, Grinding and Grinders

Posted in Literature, mathematics with tags , , , , , on September 9, 2026 by telescoper

When I moved to Ireland, almost nine years ago, one of the words I discovered had a usage with which I was unfamiliar was grind. My first encounter with this was after a lecture on vector calculus when a student asked if I knew of anyone who could offer him grinds. I didn’t know what he meant but was sure it wasn’t the meaning that sprang first into my mind so I just said no, I had just arrived in Ireland so didn’t know of anyone. I resisted the temptation to suggest he try finding an appropriate person via Grindr.

I only found out later that grinds are a form of private tuition and they are quite a big industry in Ireland, particularly at secondary school level. School students whose parents can afford it often take grinds in particular subjects to improve their performance on the Leaving Certificate. It seems to be less common for third level students to pay for grinds, but it does happen. More frequently, university students actually offer grinds to local schoolkids as a kind of part-time employment to help them through college.

The word grind can also refer to a private tutor, i.e. you can have a maths grind. It can also be used as a verb, in which sense it means `to instil or teach by persistent repetition’.

This sense of the word grind may be in use in the United Kingdom but I have never come across it before, and it seems to me to be specific to Ireland at least in current usage. A colleague sent me a link to an article about Carew Arthur Meredith, who worked at Trinity College Dublin from 1943 to 1964 but who was previously at Cambridge University and lived there until 1939:

After graduating, Meredith married Sybil Clark and settled down to what was to be for many years his occupation: that of university coach or “grinder.”

This establishes a possible conduit for the transfer of the word “grinder” from England to Ireland and it inspired me to look at the trusty online Oxford English dictionary which includes examples of usage. In fact the OED gives as examples of “grind” as a transitive or intransitive verbs and as a noun as well as the verbal noun “grinding” and the deverbal noun “grinder”. Here are some pertinent quotes. The first below, incidentally, is from a book of American college slang, demonstrating that the word had crossed the Atlantic by 1851.

Here are the most relevant examples, some of them hilariously susceptible to a double entendre.

n. Steady hard work; labour of a monotonous kind, esp. close and hard study; an instance of this, a dull and laborious task.

1851
Grind, an exaction; an oppressive action. Students speak of a very long lesson which they are required to learn, or of anything which is very unpleasant or difficult to perform as a grind.
B. H. Hall, Collection of College Words

1857
A medical student would have told him, that a ‘Grind’ meant the reading up for an examination under the tuition of one who was familiarly termed ‘a Grinder’—a process which Mr. Verdant Green’s friends would phrase as ‘Coaching’ under ‘a Coach’.
‘C. Bede’, Mr. Verdant Green Married xi. 93

vi. To work hard at a subject of study under the direction of a tutor or ‘grinder’.

1835
I am obliged to ‘grind’..that is, undergo a private examination with an authorized teacher or tutor.
E. Forbes in G. Wilson & A. Geikie, Memoir of Edward Forbes (1861) vi. 176

1870
After grinding with private-tutor Mylius the requisite time, Lessing entered the school of Camenz.
J. R. Lowell, Among my Books (1873) 1st Series 308

vt. To teach (a subject) in a steady laborious manner; also, to prepare (a pupil) in a subject.

1815
implied in:
Perhaps when Tom leaves Oxford..we may contrive some gainful grinding [i.e. tutorial] scheme between us. [at grinding n.]
J. Keble, Letter to Coleridge in Mem. (1869) iv. 63

1848
A pack of humbugs, and quacks, that weren’t fit to get their living but by grinding Latin and Greek.
W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero lvi. 502

1859
[Dr. Bennett] undertook to grind him in anatomy and physiology.
G. Wilson & A. Geikie, Memoir of Edward Forbes vi. 180

In Hard Times by Charles Dickens there is a character by the name of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, a grimly utilitarain school superintendent who insisted on teaching only facts. Hard Times was published in 1854 which is after some of the quotations above so Dickens did not originate the use of “grind” in teaching. He may have amplified it, of course.

This demonstrates that these terms were established in 19th Century England, but does not explain how their usage died out there but still flourishes in Ireland. Can anyone shed light on this? First recorded usages of grind, etc in Irish literature would be most helpful!

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Freezing Point, by Anders Bodelsen

Posted in Literature with tags , , , on August 30, 2026 by telescoper

Freezing Point, by Anders Bodelsen was first published in 1969 in Danish with the title Frysepunktet and then in English in 1971. I think it was inspired by the case of Professor James Bedford who, died in 1967 but whose body was medically frozen in the hope he could be revived at some future date. Freezing point is a essentially a work of dystopian science fiction, a genre which doesn’t always last very well but this one was reissued in 2025 because the theme of using cryogenics to avoid death has stayed with us. The book explores some of the deep questions about ageing, death and what life might be like if it went on forever.

The story is centred on a character named Bruno who is a magazine editor. It begins in 1973 when Bruno discovers that he has an incurable cancer. Just after receiving the news he meets a young ballerina, Jenny, and they have an affair. He is offered the chance to be one of the first to be frozen down, the idea being that he would be thawed out again when a cure for his illness is found. He agrees to the procedure and is put to sleep, waking in 1995. He has not physically aged, but the society he wakes up in has changed dramatically. Medical cryogenics is now ubiquitous, and there is a lucrative market in human organs. Doctors effectively rule society, which has become divided between those who opt for “all-life”, which means something approaching immortality, and those who choose “now-life”, where they can live an affluent life as mortals by mortgaging their vital organs. The stability of this society is under constant threat from imbalance of supply and demand. Its regime has become repressive, engaging in mass surveillance and control of access to books and magazines.

In 1995 Bruno finds out that Jenny has been frozen down after suffering a spinal injury that meant she could no longer dance. He also finds out that she had a son, also called Bruno, from their encounter. After struggling to readjust he pleads to be frozen down again so that he can be reunited with Jenny when a cure for her spine is available.

The last part of the book is set in 2022. It is clear that the Brave New World is now falling apart. Repeated freezings and thawings are having drastic side effects on those affected. Jenny’s new spine isn’t working as it was supposed to and even the doctors are showing signs of mental illness, constantly repeating themselves, amid frequent power cuts. In the midst of all this Bruno just wants to die. But will that be allowed?

It’s a bit corny to describe this book as a “chiller” but that’s exactly what it is. The story is told in a dry, impassive voice which makes it all the more bleak, though with enough dark humour for it to qualify as a black comedy.

P.S. Anders Bodelsen passed away in 2021.

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Sonnet No. 49

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , , , on August 30, 2026 by telescoper 
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Call’d to that audit by advis'd respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity,—
Against that time do I ensconce me here
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand against myself uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
    To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
    Since why to love I can allege no cause.

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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R.I.P. Jason Arday (1985-2026)

Posted in Biographical, Education, Literature, R.I.P. with tags , , , , , , on August 16, 2026 by telescoper
Jason Arday, pictured in 2023

I read the terrible news about the death of Jason Arday on Friday evening. The first thing I want to do is express heartfelt condolences to his family – especially his wife and two children – and his friends and former colleagues and my hope that the media who hounded Prof. Arday to his death will at least give them some space to mourn his loss.

The word “tragedy” is often misused, applied to any event that is sad which this certainly is. The case of Jason Arday is a true tragedy in the sense arising from Greek drama: the central protagonists are always flawed characters who makes bad decisions, but are propelled relentlessly towards their fate by forces entirely beyond their control. Once the right-wing media lynch mob got hold of this story they were never going to back off. This is just some of the coverage from one newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.

Source: Bluesky

Yes, Arday did bad things, but the media attention was utterly disproportionate. Nobody could be expected to withstand such treatment. How did the people churning out these articles think this would end?

I find this whole saga bleaker than anything Sophocles wrote, because nobody comes out of it with any credit at all. Not Arday himself, nor Cambridge University, nor the press, nor Nathan Cofnas, the white supremacist blogger who brought everything out into the open. The latter may have exposed academic misconduct, but his motivation was rooted in his racist views and undoubtedly malicious.

Of course academic misconduct is wrong, but it does not warrant a death sentence. And where was the media furore when a (white) History professor at Cambridge, William O’Reilly, was found to have plagiarised his own students essays? Professor O’Reilly, incidentally, remains in post. That’s just one example. I’m sure there are dozens more that we know nothing about, because they couldn’t be used to further racist ends. If standards are not applied equally then they can be used to reinforce prejudice, as they have in this case. It’s called hypocrisy.

The usual Culture Warmongers are using this case to further their agenda against the principles of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion which are supposed to be adopted in universities and other institutions. For myself, this tragedy demonstrates that EDI* principles are not satisfied by mere tokenism, a facile form of window-dressing that does nothing to change the culture within the organisation.

(*For any Americans reading this I use the UK/European EDI in preference to the DEI used in the States which reminds me too much of OPUS DEI.)

In a slightly different context, this is why I have become cynical about the “widening participation” efforts by many higher-education institutions to recruit students from disadvantaged backgrounds. These may succeed in bringing more such students into courses – and hence greater income to the university – but they are rarely backed up by the support needed to enable them to succeed. Many institutions do not even track the outcomes of these students, not because they can’t but because The Management doesn’t care: once they’re in through the door that’s “job done”.

I came from what some people would call a disadvantaged background, although I don’t think of it that way. That I have had a career in academia is a result of an enormous amount of luck, starting way back in primary school. I would dearly like to see a system in which luck wasn’t so important, but what is being done now is not the way to achieve that. If we’re going to do EDI – and we should – let’s do it properly.

UPDATE: 20/8/2026. Nathan Cofnas has been suspended by Gent University pending a disciplinary process.

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Learning is the thing for you.

Posted in Biographical, Literature with tags , , , , on August 8, 2026 by telescoper

I was tidying up today and came across my copy (right) of The Once and Future King by T.H. White. This comprises four novels and is a sort of re-telling of the Arthurian legends. I remember buying it when I was at school, at which time I was reading a lot of fantasy novels of the swords-and-sorcery type, but although it is a fantasy, this book was not at all what I anticipated. It’s very funny in places and also full of anachronisms. White uses the legend of King Arthur as a kind of metaphor or political allegory and his novels are only loosely based on the familar stories of Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. The first novel was first published as a standalone book in 1938…

Anyway, I kept this book intending to read it again but never got around to doing that. The edition I bought is in quite small type so I might find it a struggle now! I’ve kept it to one side, though, as I know a certain person whom I think will enjoy it and is young enough to still have good eyesight. I will give it to him when we next meet.

The other day somebody shared the following (wonderful) extract from the first novel, The Sword in the Stone, which is largely about the education of the young Arthur (known by his nickname “Wart”) by the wizard Merlyn. The quote remains extremely relevant today as an expression of the joy – which I wish more people shared – of learning for learning’s sake.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theo-criticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

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