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Maurice Bowra

Maurice Bowra was an English Classicist who was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford from 1938-1970. Known for his wit, he was also known for his “notoriously scabrous satirical poems on his contemporaries”, described as “unprintable” by John Sparrow, his friend from All Souls. "And unprinted [they have] largely remained, though Bowra did give occasional after-dinner readings to carefully chosen friends."

This situation changed when Henry Hardy found a cache of Bowra's poems as he was working through the papers of Isaiah Berlin. These had been saved by Berlin for a project started with John Sparrow to explain the many allusions the poems contain. Hardy, working with Jennifer Holmes, set about completing this project, adding poems from other sources, including Wadham College's Bowra papers. The result was New Bats in Old Belfries, published in 2005, 34 years after Bowra's death (1971). Hardy’s title is taken from John Betjeman’s collection of poems with the same name (1945). (Betjeman was one of the contemporaries satirised by Bowra in his poems.)

Hardy was unable to include all of Bowra’s poems in 2005: two remained unprintable: “This was because their subject was still alive, and was unwilling to give his approval for their inclusion in his lifetime.” The subject in question was the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, and he remained adamant. Hardy relates how James Morwood (Emeritus Fellow of Wadham, and editor of the Wadham Gazette) "visited him later in his Greek home to ask about his friendship with Bowra (on behalf of Leslie Mitchell, Bowra’s biographer), he found that the hurt of reading the poems was still smarting.”

Fermor died in June 2011, and Hardy and Morwood promptly published the two offending poems in the Wadham Gazette in December that year.

Salome

Strauss saw the Lachmann version of the play in Max Reinhardt's production at the Kleines Theater in Berlin on 15 November 1902,

Strauss pared down the text to what he saw as its essentials and in the process reduced it by nearly half.

In his autobiography, A Mingled Chime, Beecham disclosed that some of the performers had ignored the amended text, but nobody noticed. He went on to observe that "Salome served the useful purpose of filling the house every night it was played."

Correspondence with Richard Strauss

https://www.albin-michel.fr/correspondance-entre-richard-strauss-et-romain-rolland-9782226045348 Correspondance entre Richard Strauss et Romain Rolland 12 January 1951

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Richard_Strauss_Romain_Rolland.html?id=duEqAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y Richard Strauss & Romain Rolland: Correspondence, edited by Rollo Myers Calder & Boyars, 1968

Declarations about war and politics are not fitting for an artist, who must give his attention to his creations and his works.“ — Richard Strauss Quotation made in an article published in 1914. Strauss had refused to sign the Manifesto of German artists and intellectuals supporting the German role in the war. Other signatories included Strauss' friends and colleagues, such as Max Reinhardt, Richard Dehmel, Max Liebermann, Engelbert Humperdink and Felix Wiengartner. The original article quoting Strauss was by Richard Specht, and is quoted by Romain Rolland in his diary entry, found on page 160 of Richard Strauss and Romain Rolland, edited by Rollo Myers, Calder and boyars, London, 1989.

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1884908-richard-strauss-declarations-about-war-and-politics-are-not-fittin/

- - - - - - - - In 1900 Rolland started what became a voluminous correspondence with the German composer Richard Strauss (the English edition, edited by Rollo Myers, runs to 239 pages). At the time, Strauss was a celebrated conductor of works by Wagner, Liszt, Mozart, and of his own tone poems. In 1905, Strauss had completed his opera Salome, based on the verse play by Oscar Wilde, originally written in French. Strauss based his version of Salome on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation which he had seen performed in Berlin in 1902. Out of respect for Wilde, Strauss wanted to create a parallel French version, to be as close as possible to Wilde's original text, and he wrote to Rolland requesting his help on this project.

Rolland was initially reluctant, but a lengthy exchange ensued, occupying 50 pages of the Myers edition, and in the end Rolland made 191 suggestions for improving the Strauss/Wilde libretto. The resulting French version of Salome received its first performance in Paris in 1907, two years after the German premiere. Thereafter, Rolland's letters regularly discussed Strauss's operas, including the occasional criticism of Strauss's librettist, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal: "I only regret that the great writer who gives you such brilliant libretti too often lacks a sense ot the theatre."

Rolland was a pacifist, and concurred with Strauss when the latter refused to sign the Manifesto of German artists and intellectuals supporting the German role in World War I. Rolland noted Strauss's response in his diary: "Declarations about war and politics are not fitting for an artist, who must give his attention to his creations and his works."(Myers p. 160)

At the outbreak of World War I Strauss was invited to sign theManifesto of German artists and intellectuals supporting the German role in the conflict. Several colleagues, including Max Reinhardt, signed, but Strauss refused, and his response was recorded with approval by the French critic Romain Rolland in his diary for October 1914: "Declarations about war and politics are not fitting for an artist, who must give his attention to his creations and his works."

Strauss refused, and his response was recorded with approval by the French critic Romain Rolland in his diary:

Wadham College Gazette

Wadham Gazette redirects to here

The Wadham Gazette is the annual College record, in which the Warden and Fellows provide an update of the past year, and look forward to the year ahead. This format was established in the 1970s during the Wardenship of Stuart Hampshire, when each issue was prefaced with a dose of moral philosophy from the Warden himself. The tone lightened somewhat with the appointment of the Dean, James Morwood, as editor in 2003, although the Warden still had his say.

Morwood featured articles by Wadham Alumni, plus occasional pieces by noted authors from elsewhere. He also risked controversy by publishing the last two of Maurice Bowra’s satirical poems in 2011. These poems, by the Warden of the College from 1938-1970, had been held back because their subject, Patrick Leigh Fermor, had objected to the portrayal of two important women in his life, and publication only became possible after Fermor's death in 2011. The most controversial of the Bowra poems, The Wounded Gigolo, has never been published anywhere else.

In addition to this features section, the Gazette includes reports from a number of College Societies, as well as the Student Union, plus as many as ten of the Wadham Sports Clubs. The Gazette typically continues with a section on Alumni news, In Memoriam and Degrees, concluding with the Academic Record. The editor since 2020 has been Emeritus Fellow Bernard O’Donoghue.

The college publishes an annual magazine for alumni, the Wadham College Gazette.

Colin Middleton Career

Dickon Hall says of this period that “Middleton’s painting is dominated by the female form; it is only rarely that men appear in his work. In part these women reflect his experience of Belfast and the difficult conditions that so many lived through.” This can be seen in the three female figures of The Poet’s Garden, and in The Conspirators, both of which featured in the 1943 exhibition. “The female form, pictorially and symbolically, becomes the landscape and the life force.” The Belfast exhibition was followed by

In an interview with Patrick Murphy in 1980, Middleton said that these paintings represented ‘a first endeavour to harmonize the seemingly opposed and conflicting tendencies in human nature.’

Colin Middleton MBE (29 January 1910 – 23 December 1983) was a Northern Irish landscape artist, figure painter, and surrealist. Middleton's prolific output in an eclectic variety of modernist styles is characterised by an intense inner vision, augmented by his lifelong interest in documenting the lives of ordinary people. He has been described as ‘Ireland's greatest surrealist.’

Hi Suburbanabstrakt , something weird seems to be going on with the Colin Middleton page. You will recall that you did a lot of edits to this page from 15-30 August 2021, and from 27 March- 4 April 2022, including adding many citations. It is the links in these citations that have gone haywire. So if you click on, say, "A Drama League success". Northern Whig. 19 March 1937 what you get is a message aying 'Whoops! Something went wrong on our end'.

These messages come from the site findmypast, and you have 19 references to findmypast on the page, of which most, if not all, don't work. It looks like this site is unreliable (to put it mildly). I don't know when it went wrong: I was editing the page in August and didn't notice anything wrong then, so it might have happened after that. Can the position be salvaged?

By the way, what are the references to 'Northern Whig' about? I thought this was a bar in Belfast . . . Brymor (talk) 20:12, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

The Springfields

In late 1961 Tim's wife fell ill, and he left the group to look after her. After an audition at Quaglino's restaurant in London in Februyary 1962, Mike Hurst was taken on to replace him.

In December 1962 Tom's composition "Island of Dreams", the first recording made with Mike Hurst, debuted in the UK singles chart,

Mike Hurst later reflected on the dynamics within the group at the time: "We worked incredibly hard, rehearsing constantly. Dusty was the creative force and Tom had the business skills and wrote great songs...I always recognised Dusty's power on stage. It was obvious to me she was destined for greater things. She was an iconic figure even then."

Mike Hurst later reflected on the dynamics within the group: "We worked incredibly hard, rehearsing constantly. Dusty was the creative force and Tom had the business skills and wrote great songs....Tom sorted out with the manager what gigs we would do but it was Dusty who worked on the performance." She made the three of them stand in front of a mirror for hours with herself in the middle, rehearsing every on-stage move. "Everything was worked out to the nth degree."

Mike Hurst found himself at a loose end, but wasn't surprised at the breakup: "I always recognised Dusty's power on stage. It was obvious to me she was destined for greater things. She was an iconic figure even then." Hurst achieved success as a producer, working with Marc Bolan and Cat Stevens. In the early 1970s he

Elleston Trevor

Elleston Trevor
Born	(1920-02-17)17 February 1920 Bromley, Kent, United Kingdom
Died	21 July 1995(1995-07-21) (aged 75) Arizona, USA
Occupation(s)	British novelist and playwright - creator of Quiller
Years active	1943-1995

Surrealism

When the war reached Ireland with the Belfast Blitz in May 1941, Colin Middleton, who had experimented with surrealist themes in the 1930s, responded with a series of dark works reflecting the shocked state of the people of the city. These were exhibited at the Belfast Municipal Gallery and Museum after its restoration in 1943, following near destruction in the blitz.

Historicity of Jesus

Now that the dust has settled on this debate, perhaps we should acknowledge that the IP had a point. Bart Ehrman does indeed stress that there is not a single reference to Jesus from a contemporary witness (Chapter 1, p26, Section: The Sources for Jesus: What We Do Not Have). This is fudged in the sentence saying the same thing about Pontius Pilate and Josephus in the Sources section of the article. I suggest that this sentence should be adjusted as follows:

Yes, Ehrman does indeed ask in Chapter 5 (referring to Paul), "Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this?" The answer, which he has already told us in Chapter 1, is "No, there aren't any eyewitness reports." The section of the article I am referring to is in Sources, where a coherent discussion of what Ehrman says about sources (referring to Pilate & Josephus, not Paul) is both appropriate and necessary. The 'fudged' sentence reads "Ehrman argues that the historical record for the time period was so lacking that no contemporary eyewitness reports for individuals even such as Pontius Pilate or Josephus survive." Why does Ehrman say this? Because the same thing applies to Jesus as to Pontius Pilate and Josephus. Ehrman is stressing a lack of certain types of source. He is obviously correct to do this, and what he writes needs to be made clear, not evaded. Brymor (talk) 18:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Come again? It is surely obvious that "Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this?" is not an argument, it is rhetoric, and talking about putting a monkey wrench in the works is not an answer either - it is also rhetoric! I personally am with Ehrman here (Chapter 5, Peter & James): he has put forward a clever argument, and I like it. But it still doesn't amount to an eyewitness account, and he knows it.

Why are you going off at a tangent and ignoring what it says in the Wikipedia article? Chapter 5, although fascinating, is irrelevant to Ehrman's point about Pontius Pilate and Josephus, which comes in Chapter 1. I am not cherry picking, I am concentrating on a point Ehrman makes that is so important that he goes out of his way to stress it. Quote: "I need to stress that we do not have a single reference to Jesus by anyone — pagan, Jew, or Christian — who was a contemporary eyewitness." (p26) Are you disagreeing with Ehrman here? If so, you are promoting your views above Ehrman, which contravenes NPOV. Brymor (talk) 17:04, 3 March2023 (UTC)

I do appreciate the efforts you have made to state your case, Ramos. These Ehrman quotes do indeed cover important parts of his argument for a historic Jesus. However, as far as I am concerned, you are pushing at an open door. I moved from a partly mythicist position to a historicist one decades ago, loosely following the trajectory of G.A.Wells. So when Ehrman came along, he was preaching to the coverted as far as I was concerned. I even thought he undercooked his argument in some places. So in the second passage you quote, he says there must have been an "oral traditions that had been in circulation year after year among the followers of Jesus. . . It appears that some, probably many, of them go back to the 30s CE." I would suggest the oral traditions went back further than this, to significantly before 30 CE. Where i part company with Ehrman is when he says, addressing our topic, "The absence of eyewitness accounts would be relevant if, and only if, we had reason to suspect that we should have eyewitness reports if Jesus really lived." No! The absence of eyewitness reports is relevant because if they existed, the argument for a historical Jesus would be even stronger.

Stepping back from this point, what I am trying to address is a systemic flaw in this article, which has been pointed out by others (see Style above), that is the tendency to close down debate whenever something seems to threaten the so-called 'consensus'. To be fair, editors who exhibit this defensiveness are mostly following the sources - the American sources, anyway. Except for Ehrman: he isn't defensive, he takes on all comers! For example he says (p64) "at the end of the day I simply trust human intelligence. Anyone should be able to see whether a point of view is plausible or absurd, whether a historical claim has merit or is pure fantasy driven by an ideological or theological desire for a certain set of answers to be right."

Defensiveness is counter-productive, because it looks like weakness. This is evident in several places in the article - I have simply chosen one of the easiest ones to put right. Suppressing any reference to an obvious truth such as the lack of eyewitnesses is counter-productive because it implies that the arguments against it are weak, and the mythicists will pounce on it with glee. But the arguments against it are not weak, they aren't perfect, but they are good enough. Ehrman's approach to this sort of thing is to state the difficulty up front, then argue effectively against it (as you have convincingly demonstrated). That is the correct approach, which we in Wikipedia can applaud. Defensiveness in the face of uncomfortable truths is wrong. Brymor (talk) 21:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Clearly we are not going to agree about eyewitness reports. I have already stated what I think is wrong with the article in some detail. There is no point in repeating myself, so let's leave it there. Brymor (talk) 20:40, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Sources

Ehrman acknowledges that there are no contemporary eyewitness reports of Jesus, but counters this by arguing that the historical record for the time period was so lacking that no contemporary eyewitness testimony even confirms the existence of individuals such as Pontius Pilate or Josephus.

Portraits of the historical Jesus

Further insight into why such differences persist is provided by Ehrman when he argues that there are essentialy two different instances of Jesus, the one who really existed, and the one most Christians believe in today. Brymor (talk) 19:29, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Ehrman elucidates these differences by pointing out that there are essentialy two different portraits of Jesus, one for the preacher who really existed, and the other for the Jesus most Christians believe in today. Brymor (talk) 17:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Ehrman's Clarification

Agreed. Ehrman's clarification makes brutally clear what undermines most discussions on the historicity of Jesus (not just here). Scholars have no problem agreeing on the historicity of the charismatic preacher who was Jesus in real life. As for the other Jesus, the miracle worker who returns from the dead, scholars do not agree, and they never will. Ehrman understands this, and I can't think of a better way of stating it in the article than by quoting him word for word.

@Ramos: I am surprised you are doubtful about this. After all, it was you who included precisely this quote in your note (currently note 12), which means that you are fully aware of its significance. Brymor (talk) 16:56, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Flag this for rewrite

@IP: Your proposal to rewrite this article is unnecessary.There are many sound arguments expressed in the article, based on valid sources. As Jeppiz says, "we report what reliable sources say", and this is true here, up to a point. Unfortunately, there is a specific problem with this article, which has been pointed out by several editors before on this Talk page, namely that what some "reliable sources say" has been suppressed, leading to a lack of balance.

This selection bias is easily remedied. All you have to do is find an example of what you consider bias, and post a countervailing (reliable) source to achieve the necessary balance. Good luck! Brymor (talk) 14:37, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

@Jeppiz, the IP's post does not contravene WP:NOTFORUM. Quote: "article talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article" The post states what the IP thinks is wrong with the article, specifically that it is biased, has logical fallacies, is slanted towards opinion, and so on. The concrete suggestion for improvement is to rewrite the article (which I disagree with, but this could be necessary if the article were bad enough). To claim that this valid attempt, however flawed, to improve the article contravenes WP:NOTFORUM looks like another example of The lady doth protest too much, methinks noted by Tedweverka under Style above. Brymor (talk) 15:06, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Death of Middleton's father 1933 or 1935?

The original text of the article gave the date of death of Middleton's father Charles as 1935. Unfortunately, the citation for this date is one of the broken links to findmypast.co.uk posted by Suburbanabstrakt (see above). Looking up one of our valid citations (Dickon Hall), I discovered the date was actually 1933, so I edited the page accordingly. However, as it was possible that the original citation had said 1935, I researched further and discovered that the Dictionary of Ulster Biography appears to support this: Charles Collins Middleton (1878 - 1935).

As I am in correspondence with Dickon Hall, I asked him to clarify this discrepancy. Here is his reply (Jane is Middleton's surviving daughter) : There are inconsistencies in the dates given as you say. I have spoken to Jane about this as 1933 and 1935 were both given for Charles’ death in different publications and she confirmed that it was 1933. Brymor (talk) 12:31, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

2023 Exhibition

In September 2023, 'eighty years since the ground-breaking exhibition Colin Middleton held at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, now the Ulster Museum, and forty years after his death,' the Ulster Museum held a new exhibition of his works, celebrating his association with Belfast, the city of which he said, "I belong here as I never belonged anywhere else in the country." This exhibition brought together 'works held in the public collection with those from private lenders [to provide a] full picture of this artist's talent and life.'