Crisis, What Crisis? The EU in Historical Perspective

This post was contributed by Professor Kiran Klaus Patel, writer for Birkbeck’s Reluctant Internationalists project. This first appeared on the project’s blog on 27 November 2015

European crisis (copyright www.eurocrisisexplained.co.uk)

Once again, the European Union is mired in crisis. First the debt crisis and the desperate attempts to keep Greece within the Eurozone; then the high number of refugees landing on European shores; and now the security threats of Islamist terrorism: in none of these cases does the EU cut a fine figure.

Intelligence cooperation between its member states remains inadequate. Fences and nation-centered solutions seem to dominate responses to the rising number of refugees and migrants. And before that, Greece already showcased the lack of European consensus on values such as solidarity and reliability. In all these (and other) instances, the EU is accused of not delivering. Many observers feel that the Union is on the verge of collapse, and history time and again features prominently to support such claims. In a recent article, for instance, Brendan Simms and Timothy Less invoke the situation in Austria-Hungary in 1918, and in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1990, to explain where the EU stands today. Against this backdrop, they predict the “disintegration of the European project” unless draconian measures are taken.[1]

History does not repeat itself

Of course, nobody knows what the future will bring. Still, many scenarios and historical analogies seem rather far-fetched. They tend to neglect the complexities of the past (and the present), as a problem that has already been critiqued in earlier essays, for instance by Jessica Reinisch and Dora Vargha in their blog posts on questions of migration. History does not repeat itself. And if history has a lesson, then it is that the EU (including its predecessors) is surprisingly resilient.

Doom-and-gloom talk has accompanied the integration process since it began in the first postwar decade. In fact, many of its deepest crises eventually led to an expansion of activities and competences. Already the EU’s founding fathers highlighted this phenomenon. In his memoirs, Jean Monnet argued that Europe would be built on crises.[2] For him, “crisis” did not rhyme with “collapse,” but with further integration steps. And, indeed, the 1970s and early 1980s – at the time characterized as a period of stagnation and “Eurosclerosis” – witnessed the European Communities’ first enlargement rounds and advances in several new fields, including foreign and monetary policies.

This does not mean that times were rosy for Brussels. But it certainly did not let a serious crisis go to waste. Similar dynamics also characterize the ongoing debates on the Eurozone, for instance. In a strictly institutional sense, the EU has grown stronger in the past few years by creating a series of new instruments such as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Beyond instituting new measures, the more active role of the European Central Bank is another example of how the European Union has become a more important player during and due to the crisis.

This does not mean that all of this is good. Most EU reforms of this kind are built on unstable compromises, prone to lead to new problems later. Moreover, such dynamics do not imply that integration is progressing steadily. The EU’s founding fathers would be frustrated if they saw the direction in which their project has developed. The prospects of a full-fledged federal union – as the ultimate goal of many of those who stood at the EU’s cradle – seem rather dim today. Moreover, there have been major defeats in the course of the past decades—some real, others mainly symbolic. While the plans to create a European Defense Community that failed in 1954 belong in the first of these categories, the non-ratification of the 2004 Constitutional Treaty is more part of the latter. Crisis talk loomed large in both these moments, but their wider context is telling: 1954 ultimately sparked new efforts to deepen integration, clearing the route to the Treaties of Rome less than three years later. Fifty years on, the EU also quickly identified an alternative, leading to the Lisbon Treaty of 2009. The dogs bark, the caravan passes on.

Strength in flexibility

Even if the EU continues to exist, everything about it has changed massively over time. The heavy-handed form of economic intervention characteristic of the early Common Agricultural Policy of the 1960s has found few successors. Over and over, the institutional balances have been readjusted; supranational tendencies have been challenged by a more intergovernmental approach, creating a highly hybrid creature. From a somewhat Keynesian orientation, the EU has long made a swing to a more neoliberal economic approach. And these are just a few examples. It is easy to criticize these alterations as opportunistic. Its very flexibility, however, has also made the EU particularly resilient. In many ways, it operates much more as a platform that allows (groups of) its member states to take initiatives, than as a federal state.

This also makes historical analogies problematic. Today’s EU is remarkably different from entities and the periods Simms, Less, and others compare it to. Nobody knows exactly what the EU is—but it is certainly not a state or an empire. Admittedly, it has far-reaching sovereignty rights in monetary matters, along with regulatory competences in many policy domains, including energy, consumer protection, and transport. This multi-dimensional character makes it less likely to fall into dysfunction – a failure in one field can be compensated by an active role in other policy domains. Coal and steel are the obvious examples: from being the starting point of the process leading to today’s EU, they have now become marginal. But despite its role in so many policy fields, the EU has never acquired full federal or state-like qualities. With its hybrid nature, it still shares some characteristics with International Organizations and other forms of regional integration. And while empires and states dissolve and fail, International Organizations (almost) never die, as Gottfried Haberler, Susan Strange, and others argued already decades ago.[3]They might change their names or functions, but they tend to live and linger on. The worst that could happen to the EU is to be reduced to a rather technical International Organization, a fate it would then share with many other IOs.

But even that is unlikely, mainly because of the world the EU operates in. Globalization and the rise of a dense web of institutionalized connections between states and societies shape today’s Europe. The EU cooperates with other institutions to an extent unforeseen in the nineteenth century or Socialist nation-states and empires. Today, states and organizations such as the EU are all embedded in a dense web of more or less formalized linkages. And often, the European Union is only one of several players, and one of several cards that its member states have up their sleeves. Witness the sudden reappearance of the Western European Union at the end of the Cold War or, more recently, the close cooperation of the IMF with the EU’s institutions in Greece and the role of the OSCE in the war in Ukraine. All this demonstrates that globalization and geopolitical constellations induce states to cooperate, and to do so, they regularly fall back on the institutions at hand.

Read the original post on The Reluctant Internationalists project site

In our times, European nation-states therefore rarely opt for either national sovereignty or the EU. Most frequently, they choose between various formats and forms of international cooperation. Together, these diverse organizations contribute to a robust and resilient architecture of cooperation, which also stabilizes the EU’s position in the world. Seen from this vantage point, even a Brexit would not lead to an automatic unwinding of the system. In fact, the first two things the United Kingdom would do after leaving is to try to rejoin EFTA, actually its own brainchild but carelessly abandoned in the 1960s, when it started to flirt with the EC and even more so in 1973, after joining the European Communities. And, secondly, to renegotiate its relationship to the EU – but this time from the weak position of an outsider.

All this does not mean that the EU is perfect, quite the contrary. It’s just very likely to stay. There is life in the old dog yet.

Kiran Klaus Patel is Jean Monnet professor of European and global history at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. His next book The New Deal: A Global History is published by Princeton University Press in January. He is presently writing a history of European cooperation and integration during the twentieth century.

[1] Brendan Simms and Timothy Less, “A Crisis without End,” New Statesman, 9 November 2015.

[2] Jean Monnet, Memoirs (London: Collins, 1978).

[3] Susan Strange, “Why Do International Organizations Never Die?”Autonomous Policy Making By International Organizations, ed. Bob Reinalda and Bertjan Verbeek (London: Routledge, 1998), 213–220; Gottfried Haberler,Economic Growth and Stability: An Analysis of Economic Change and Policies(Los Angeles: Nash Publ., 1974), 156.

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Four forgotten medieval books at Birkbeck College

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This post was contributed by Prof Anthony Bale, who teaches on the MA Medieval Literature and Culture at Birkbeck’s Department of English and Humanities. This article was originally posted on the Material Texts Network on October 30 2015

When is a book not a book? The destruction of a book – through burning, through recycling, through iconoclasm, for instance – places great emphasis on its materiality, its power as a physical object that must be destroyed. Conversely, when nobody knows about a book’s existence, it simply disappears – both the physical book and the textual lives inside it. When a book is unknown and hidden away it is perhaps reduced to the bare facts of its existence: a piece of matter unread, unloved, unvalued, uncatalogued.

Books disappear easily when they are not catalogued; it is through catalogues and finding aids that medievalists find their sources. When I joined Birkbeck College as a lecturer in 2002, I was excited to find that the College owned one manuscript, which I knew about from Neil R. Ker’s magisterial four-volume catalogue, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries. But time passed, I became diverted by other projects, and I never got round to looking at the manuscript. And then I more or less forgot about it.

This year I have been teaching a class on ‘Medieval Material Texts’ for students on Birkbeck’s MA in Medieval Literature & Culture. It struck me that it would be so much easier to talk about medieval books if one had one to show to the students – to talk about the binding, the physical construction of a book, the stains and the damage, the signs of a book’s lived life, as well as the text, the decoration, the illustration. So, somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered Ker’s description of one manuscript, and looked it up, and sent an email off to my subject-librarian at Birkbeck’s library.

It was as much as a surprise to the College as it was to me to discover that Birkbeck houses a small collection of not one but four medieval books (three manuscripts and one incunabulum). I quickly arranged to view the books, three of which have not been catalogued and do not seem to have been viewed since around 1991. The books comprise a sort of ‘capsule collection’: they represent several important developments in European religious culture, in book history, and in literary tastes.

The books are:

The Birkbeck Hours (sine numero): a beautiful small book of hours, from northern France, dated to c. 1400.

MS L.I: the rules and customs of the Capitoli della Compagnia di S. Girolamo of Siena, dated to the early fifteenth century.

MS 108.C: a manuscript of the Sententaie Sapientiae, attributed to Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Seneca, and which once belonged to the Monastery of St Zeno, Verona; dated to c. 1450.

Dictys Cretensis & Dares Phrygius (sine numero): a skin-bound volume, a much-read history of the Trojan War, printed at Venice, 1499.

Birkbeck hours; King David at Prayer (fol. 85r)

One of the manuscripts, the Birkbeck Hours, was given to the College in 1977 by the widow of Dr Charles Fox (1897-1977), a lecturer at Birkbeck who later became a distinguished mathematician at Concordia University in Montreal. How the other three manuscripts reached Birkbeck is not known at present, although we do know that MS L.I was purchased by the College in the 1950s, probably to be used as a teaching aid. Ownership inscriptions in MS 108.C show that, in the nineteenth century, it belonged to a Peter John Bruff and, later, the Victorian scholar and antiquarian R. A. H. Bickford-Smith (1859-1916).

The books open a window onto readers and writers from hundreds of years ago; by coming back into public view, they can delight and instruct again. A more detailed examination of the books will, in time, yield much more about the lives these fascinating books have lived, and continue to live.

NB: The books are not currently available for public view, but it is hoped that a digitisation project will make them available online in due course.

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The demise of part-time study – who cares?

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This post was contributed by Claire Callender, Professor of higher education at Birkbeck, is based on her contribution to the Higher Education Policy Institute’s new report on part-time study, It’s the finance, stupid!, published today.

Since 2010-11, the number of entrants to part-time undergraduate study in England has fallen by 55 per cent. Last year alone, the numbers dropped by 10 per cent.

This has gone almost unnoticed by most of the higher education sector, the media, politicians and the public. Yet, if there had been a drop of 55 per cent in full-time undergraduate entrants following the 2012/13 student funding reforms, there would have been uproar.

Universities and other higher education stakeholders would have been outraged and demanded action. Ministers’ heads would have rolled. When this occurred among part-time entrants, nothing happened.

Yet part-time education matters because it transforms lives and drives our economy by enabling people to upskill and advance their careers or reskill for a new one. It matters for higher education, too, because part-time study contributes to a more flexible and diverse sector, while helping to widen participation and increase social mobility.

In 2012/13, public teaching funding in England was largely replaced by tuition fees, capped for part-time students at £6,750 a year. Income contingent loans were made available to cover the fees, which students taking a Bachelor’s degree start to repay four years after starting their course, so long as they are earning over £21,000 a year. They then pay 9 per cent of their income above £21,000, with any outstanding debt written-off after 30 years. The Government at the time claimed these reforms would make part-time study more affordable and open up access. They have had the opposite effect – part-time study is less affordable while numbers have plummeted.

As public funding fell away, tuition fees rose – in some cases tripling. But the majority of potential part-time students do not qualify for the new loans to cover these higher fees because of the overly restrictive eligibility criteria. Instead, they are faced with far higher fees that they have to pay upfront and out of their own pocket. And amongst those who qualify for loans, loan take-up is far lower than predicted. The government estimated that a third of part-timers would take out loans. But only 19% have done so since the new loans were introduced. This suggests that these loans are not necessarily perceived as a safeguard against the risks of part-time study.

Part-timers are typically older than full-time students, and have numerous family and financial responsibilities that take priority over discretionary spending such as on study – especially in times of economic uncertainty. Put simply, part-time study is unaffordable for more people than ever before.

The recession may have contributed to the fall in demand for part-time study. However, the recession in England was less severe than in the rest of the UK yet the decline in part-time entrants in England has been far greater. The difference is that the other UK countries did not withdraw teaching funding or increase tuition fees.

As demand for part-time study has dropped, so too has the supply. There are no longer any incentives for higher education institutions to offer more expensive and risky part-time courses, especially where there is an excess of demand for now-uncapped full-time courses. Even if demand recovers, reviving dismantled part-time provision and infrastructure will be challenging.

The student loan rules, which are designed for young, full-time students, need to be rejigged to acknowledge the distinctive characteristics of the part-time population. At a minimum, the government needs to loosen the eligibility criteria. It also needs to consider larger subsidies to part-time study to encourage demand.

If the government is committed to up-skilling the workforce, it must take some radical action to arrest the decline of part-time study before it becomes terminal.

Birkbeck is an advocate for combining work and study. More information can be found here.

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Prof Claire Callender

Unavoidable distractions

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This post was contributed by Alexis Alvarez Nakagawa, PhD Candidate and associate tutor in the School of Law

“After each death, I find myself mouthing a cumbersome chain of lawyerly words, hoping for ironclad prosecution and maximum sentences, to bring to justice those who have killed Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, and numerous others. I hear myself invoking the heroic terror of the criminal justice system. I make no illusions that this will spackle the gaping fault of the United States’s racial terrain.

To digress for a moment, I also work on refugee law, and though I support and believe in refugee claims for securing better lives for individual applicants, these prosecutions seem to me much like the promise of refugee law to affect real change: vacant. The international refugee law system, while important to scores of individual claimants, represses a more meaningful commitment to free movement and serves to further stabilize and legitimize a system of border violence and geopolitical exploitation.

Criminal prosecutions in these cases of police murder are (sometimes) offered as individual sanctions only after the harm has been done, and they do not seek to reduce the widening net of carceral politics. But then again, is this the time to abandon the use of criminal justice?”

– Eddie Bruce-Jones, Black Lives and the State of Distraction.

Eddie Bruce-Jones’ article Black Lives and the State of Distraction, which appeared in at the Los Angeles Review of Books last week, is a beautifully written and insightful short piece that shows the difficulties and tensions that arise for anyone who tries to think critically from and through the experience of being involved, at some stage of their life, in the criminal justice system and tries to relate this experience to a broader agenda of social change and political emancipation.

However, perhaps what is most striking about Eddie’s article, beyond his thoughtful analysis is his sensibility in approaching very difficult political and theoretical issues. A sensibility that shows that this piece was written not only as a insightful meditation about the barbarities and paradoxes of the system, but also by the stroke of a cathartic impulse –an impulse that many of us feel from time to time – that departs from the unpleasantness of and discomfort with current theoretical standpoints in criminology and criminal justice studies.

In what follows, I would like to deploy some thoughts that focus more on where I might disagree with Eddie, even if I really feel identified with his mood and even when I believe that, very probably, he will identify with my own. That is why, more than to formulate some serious objections to his thinking, I would like to suggest a slightly different but complementary approach with the ultimate aim of opening up a discussion. Thus this commentary on Eddie’s work is also an invitation to debate to anybody that would want to add or move forward our ongoing conversation.

Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones

I would like to formulate three brief points of difference with Eddie’s piece.

1) Maybe I should begin by stating that I sadly believe that there is no effective way, for the moment at least, to provide some kind of real and effective reckoning of state violence within an abolitionist framework. I have to wonder, on this point, what we would do in these cases of structural violence, of racism and sexism if we do not plead for “justice” or at least for the application of the same standards that allegedly everybody would receive in those circumstances?

I recall that Nils Christie, one of the founders of the abolitionist theoretical and political movement, used to say that even in the cases of state violence (more precisely, he was speaking about genocide) an abolitionist position would be to sit the “perpetrators” and the “victims” together so that they can negotiate towards a solution (and also maybe a “reconciliation”). Besides this solution not seeming very “practical” in our current cultural context, more importantly, in many respects, this approach seems familiar to some past failed experiences and, more precisely, similar to the “state mandated reconciliation” of South Africa’s transitional process. Though, we know with some detail how this story ends: nothing changed very much in South Africa in the wake of its transition to democracy.

On the contrary, we can suggest that this transition legalized a “double way” system in which the state violence was acquitted in exchange for lean confessions, while still all the inhabitants at the margins of South African society continued to be “processed” by a very racialized criminal justice system. In other words, they legalized what we already have in fact in every criminal justice system around the world.

2) One thing that needs not to be left out of view, I believe, is that abolitionist strategies can also legitimate undesirable agendas (such as prosecutions, as Eddie points out). Leaving aside how many abolitionist strategies and alternatives to prison have been used so far to extend the scope of the criminal justice system and with that the framework of social control (rather than reducing them as was the original idea), I think that this strategy, in this context of state violence, can even also be used to legitimate the grounds of an state of exceptionality (in other words, “impunity”) precisely in these, that are what we can call fairly, “the worst cases”.

This is especially true if we know, as we surely do, that the criminal justice and prison system will not disappear in the short term and will continue to exist for all the other “regular crimes”. As Eddie himself has noted to me in a subsequent conversation, it is very hard to envision the end of the criminal justice system without thinking at the same time about abolishing the state and without disclosing the intertwined relationship between law and violence—so hard, in fact, immediately after one starts to seriously contemplate abolitionism, the very idea of it begins to fade away as a too-distant outcome.

But, I may add that, to make matters even worse, if we accept, as I am probably keen to accept, that we need to abolish state sovereignty to be able of practically think about abolishing the criminal justice system, we face a new and more intractable problem: the very idea of sovereignty is so centrally tied to the state as with notions of autonomy, self-determination and freedom that underpin the idea of political emancipation (and which in turn encompass the main goals of abolitionism), that we very quickly reach an unavoidable dead end: we cannot have abolitionism with sovereignty, but it seems that we also cannot have abolitionism without it.

On the other hand, I think that some matters of principle (let’s say “the prison is bad, and therefore we should not take the risk of legitimating it in any case”) may lead us to a form of practical paralysis. Or, in other words, to even worst “distractions” than the distraction of prosecutions: it may lead us to the work of engineering “beautiful distractions” that very probably will not have any political relevance today. Or is it that only prosecutions can be a distraction? Can’t be a purist abolitionist strategy constitute an even worst distraction for current and pressing issues that needs an answer today? I am not saying that we must always surrender to the tyranny of the now, but I strongly believe that the danger and temptation of being “distracted” is equally present in many abolitionist positions. How then can we be able to stand by the side of a radical openness to an alternative future without being distracted from our current, present demands? How can we avoid allowing our radical goals from stealing us completely from this untreatable reality?

Alexis Alvarez Nakagawa

3) In another but related vein, I believe that still some prosecutions can serve to expose structural violence, racism and sexism and that some criminal trials are more than just distractions and can be good “catalysts” or “triggers” of broader political struggles. And not only that! To some extent, in these kind of cases, not only can (human) perpetrators go to trial, but also in many relevant ways, the state or sovereign violence is put under scrutiny at the dock.

And of course, there is a lot of space there for de-legitimating state violence and even the criminal justice system. It might be possible to think in a way of de-legitimating the structural violence of the system with the tools of the system itself. Can we use the criminal justice system against itself? Can we re-direct its violence against its violence? I believe that precisely in these cases of police violence, racism, sexism and even genocide or other gross human rights violations, we have a very good opportunity to achieve this.

I think that it is even possible, within this framework, to defend a more “up-to-date” abolitionist position: one that of course pursues the same goals as the other more purist abolitionism, but by more unclean, impure and maybe effective ways. Can we find within all this a thread, a hint, the onset of a road towards a new abolitionism? Can be this a good synthesis between a radical openness and an engagement with current pressing issues?

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“You know it’s been a great writing day when it’s 4pm and you haven’t eaten”: Benjamin Wood on writing The Ecliptic

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This post was contributed by Andrew Youngson, media and publicity officer for Birkbeck, University of London

In Benjamin Wood’s second novel, The Ecliptic, we delve into the story of Elspeth ‘Knell’ Conroy, a passionate, though somewhat lost, painter. Her desperate pursuit of truth and capturing it in her creations leads her to flee the commercialised 1970s London art scene. Refuge awaits off the coast of Istanbul in the form of Portmantle — the secret retreat on the island of Heybeliada which houses an eclectic group of creatives, from painters to architects and writers.

Will Ellie reconnect with her muse? What exactly was she fleeing from? And is this Turkish haven really everything she thought it would be? All come to light in Benjamin’s book, a fascinating journey into the mind of a passionate artist and her quest for creative authenticity.

The frequently thrilling and consistently moving story was sparked by Benjamin’s own experiences in Istanbul during a three-month artist-in-residence cultural exchange programme which the 34-year-old, Southport-raised writer was selected for by the British Council. Set up with an apartment in Istanbul for the duration, he was handed a simple mission: explore.

Here, the senior lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck’s Department of English and Humanities, discusses his Turkish adventure, crafting his novel, and the pursuit of authenticity in art.

Hi Benjamin. How was the Istanbul experience?

I was so absorbed by it. There’s something about the city itself — it’s a meeting place of continents, and it has an innate sense of history, but equally there’s a certain manner to the people there that I enjoyed. It was quite a levelling experience. I felt that there was a frenetic energy to the city, but also an astounding natural beauty. I could wander alone and feel quite a part of things even though it was a different culture from the one I grew up in. But actually, I don’t know if it was the people or the landscape that I found most inspiring. I think it was going back and forth from the mainland to the islands on the ferry that gave me the strongest connection to the place.

That’s where the idea for the book really came to mind, wasn’t it? What sparked it?

It was visiting the island, Heybeliada, and discovering that a Turkish author Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar had lived and worked there. That set my creative head spinning, wondering about the possibilities of how far I could extend this idea of a reclusive artist at work on the island, and how I could use the landscape to hypnotise the reader.

In the book you go into beautiful detail about the process of painting and creating art in general. I believe you went to art college for a while in your youth, but beyond that, what research was involved?

A mix of book learning, extrapolation and some imaginative projection, I suppose. A lot of the stuff about Ellie wandering around Paddington with her sketch book is something I do as a writer. If I’m looking to write about somewhere, I go there and try to memorise the scene and convey that in language — these are things a painter does, it’s just that my medium is different.

How did you come to flesh out the central character, Ellie?

I tend to read a lot of life stories of artists or creative people who I find inspiring. With this, I was reading about Alasdair Gray and Francis Bacon and John Craxton. I tried to find ways to appropriate elements of their lives and create a viable character of my own.

I try to build a character out of found materials and my own personal reflections, to mould them into something that’s believable and authentic — as authentic as fiction can be, anyway.

Ellie goes through some very dark times. Do your characters take you down a dark path personally when you’re writing them?

I tend to be drawn to characters that are solitary and autodidactic, and who feel both compelled towards the world they inhabit, but also repelled by that world too. My characters tend to be only children with few friends who have a very active interior life.

It does make you go to places you wouldn’t wish to go to in your own life, but when you imagine your character in situations like that, it’s one of the most affecting things you can do. You really feel like you’ve been there yourself and, even though you haven’t experienced that particular thing, somewhere you have access to the truth of what it feels like. I’m not saying there aren’t inconsistencies, but when you go into that inner darkness of the character, you realise that it exists in you as well.

Does it feel cathartic?

Yes, it’s saved me a ton in therapy. (Laughs) I’ve always been an aggressively creative person. I think it’s because I work out so much of my anguish that way.

A photo of Istanbul taken by Benjamin during his writing residency

Do you miss the characters once the book is finished?

I miss being in their headspace. It’s an odd thing, because they’re always with you, in a way, but equally you move on to the next project. It’s like being an actor going from one role to the next; you give up so much of yourself to get it on the page, but the character gives you so much in return. But you forget so much of them as soon as you send off the draft. You have to do that otherwise you would go completely mad.

There’s a flushing out process in between novels when you need a year — well, I need a year — to get over the last one and ruminate on the next one and find the right voice.

When doing her best work, Ellie becomes completely absorbed in her work and time seems to stand still. Do you crave those moments in your own writing?

Yes! You reach this plane of consciousness where you’re not aware you are writing and creating. You’re just in this…it’s like when you look at a heat shimmer on a hot day. It’s like that shimmer is all around you. Those moments come rarely, so when they come to you, you go until you are exhausted.

You know it’s been a great writing day when it’s 4pm and you haven’t eaten. You come out of it and suddenly you’re hungry, then you look back and you have written 5,000 words. Those days rarely come at the beginning, they tend to come at the end when everything is coalescing and words just seem to flow.

It’s a physical rapture that you feel when it’s going absolutely as well as it can. And those moments usually need the least amount of retouching afterwards. Because it’s like the tap has opened up and it’s clear water rushing out.

What’s next for you?

I’m writing my next novel. I’ve got the research behind me now, and I’m entering the writing stage. I’m in the foothills of the thing. Actually the thing that takes me the longest isn’t the writing; it’s all the formulation of the character and finding the voice. It takes a long time to find the right framework and the right voice to it all. Once I’ve got that, it gets much easier to commit the words to the page.

How do you find striking a balance between writing and your teaching work?

It can be exhausting but you learn to manage. I tend to be a ‘compartmentaliser’ anyway, so when I’m at Birkbeck I’m doing Birkbeck stuff, and the days which I’m allotted for research are my writing days and nothing really interrupts them.

I also find that I get into a bit of a funk when I’m not teaching and I’m solely working on a novel. Teaching keeps me in the real world, and gives me purpose beyond churning out a creative project. I find I bounce off the energy of this place.

I find teaching really rewarding. It allows me to think about my own craft continuously, to look at the work of great writers and see how their stories function. You’re teaching yourself as much as you’re teaching others.

The Ecliptic is available now in hardback and Kindle. His first novel, The Bellwether Revivals is also available across print and digital formats

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Current Affairs – Calling all Applied Linguists

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This post was contributed by Professor Penelope Gardner-Chloros, Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication

Language class (Photo: Jirka-Matousek)

In a previous blog, I wrote about the determination of the origin of migrants through linguistic analysis. Since then, the refugee influx has become more significant by the day, now reaching major crisis proportions. Unfortunately it is no sort of solution to anything, but a few further reflections on linguistic aspects of this crisis come to mind.

English speakers

First, there has been much misinformation as to why so many migrants who have been camping in Calais wish to enter Britain rather than staying in France. Although the government would have us believe that it is because of our “over-generous” benefits system, in fact it is largely for other reasons, notably the fact that many of them speak English and not French.

Britain has benefited hugely in the past from English being a world language (although this is largely due to the power and influence of the US rather than that of Britain itself). Now, the status and ubiquity of English have, as it were, come back to hit us in the face.

Language lessons

Secondly, you may have read recently that the German government is offering 600 hours of German language lessons to the migrants settling in Germany. Scandinavian governments also have been offering language lessons to newly arrived settlers for many decades. This is a highly effective measure: learning a language is probably the best method for understanding the relevant culture as well as allowing suitable adaptation and integration in the host country. As an added bonus, it provides work for an army of language teachers, a fact which people reading this blog should appreciate.

IELTS exams

A third recent news item also provides food for (linguistic) thought. The Home Secretary Theresa May, desperate to cut down the number of migrants to the UK in order to fulfil election promises, plans to impose a higher IELTS English language requirement on prospective students from non-EU countries than the one demanded at the moment.

As someone who teaches students of many different mother-tongues, I agree that insufficient English language skills can be a problem. But on the whole our international students can express themselves quite adequately in oral discussion.

The problems arise with academic essay-writing, on the basis of which their university performance is graded. The difficulties there are less to do with incorrect English as such, and more to do with understanding what type of discourse is expected in such an essay – a complex linguistic and cultural question, though one which can of course be taught.

The IELTS language exams are not designed to measure these types of academic skills, so the university itself has to try to fill the gap by providing academic English and study skills training. But this is often too little and too late.

In fact, the proposal by Theresa May has nothing to do with academic motives – nobody really even pretends that it does. It is purely a way to legitimate the exclusion of one cohort of migrants and so make the overall immigration figures look better.

Excluding university students is, to put it mildly, a strange choice, since the government has elsewhere explicitly committed itself to accepting skilled, as opposed to unskilled, migrants. In purely financial terms, it means that the UK will benefit less from the overseas students’ fees – never mind the loss of goodwill which will result if we no longer allow overseas students to be educated in the UK.

In each of these news items, the linguistic issues are only part of the picture and political solutions are by far the most pressing. Still, the part played by language in day-to-day problems is evident. Applied Linguistics may not be able to solve the world’s problems, but it is important as the discipline which allows the related linguistic issues to be addressed in a scientific and well-informed manner.

Read the BBC’s recent article on “the battle over the words used to describe migrants”

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TEF, REF, QR, deregulation: thoughts on Jo Johnson’s HE talk

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This post was contributed by Dr Martin Eve, senior lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck’s Department of English and Humanities. It was originally posted on Dr Eve’s personal blog on Wed 9 September. It was then reblogged by Times Higher Education.

Universities minister, Jo Johnson

I feel fairly drained today reading the speech given by the minister for Higher Education, Jo Johnson.

The inferences I make about the speech are that:

There’s a massive coming wave of shake-ups to HE finance, both research and teaching, implemented through a Teaching Excellence Framework
Critiques of the REF have backfired as they are used in a deft rhetorical move to cut state funding for research through QR

This is all just my reading of the speech. It doesn’t represent my employer’s views and it is speculative.

On TEF

Even while decrying REF as “bureaucratic and burdensome to academics”, Jo Johnson wants a TEF. There’s so much talk of “deregulation” in the speech, even while the crux of it is to introduce a massive top-down regulatory mechanism. The core of TEF is financial, though, regardless of what Johnson says about “teaching quality”. It is to be incentivized by allowing institutions to raise their tuition fees:

there will be financial incentives behind the TEF, with those offering high quality teaching able to increase fees with inflation

Another way of putting this is from the flip side: there will be real-term cuts to the funding of institutions that do not fare well under this system. Since assessment will presumably be relative from a single budgetary pot, this is a zero-sum game in which some universities are to be slowly de-funded.

There’s also the problem of private providers for the government. These were fairly disastrous before. TEF gives a way to control this expansion, though. It seems that the government wants to decouple fee increases from social mobility while at the same time controlling the expansion of private provision according to teaching metrics. The end point looks likely to be to cut all public support for teaching outside the fee loan system and to squeeze the loan system to drive up competition (while getting rid of social mobility regulators like OFFA). Lots of universities won’t survive that kind of move, but will be replaced by new teaching providers.

On REF and Research Councils

The current modelled spending cuts in BIS are unlikely to leave research funding untouched. The Minister for HE used a deft rhetorical elision to couple academics’ critiques of the REF with removal of state funding for teaching and research:

“To deliver our ambitions, we also plan to reform the higher education and research system architecture. […] Our regulatory regime is still based upon a system where government directly funds institutions rather than reflecting the fact that students are the purchasers. […] It is also clear to me that there are many in the sector demanding a process for assessing the quality of scholarly output that is less bureaucratic and burdensome to academics.”

These critiques, of course, were of REF as a reductive quantifying procedure. They were not meant to justify the removal of QR, just the removal of the process by which it was assigned. Be careful what you wish for. REF was the way that QR was saved. Regardless of whether you like REF or not (I hate the procedure, but want universities to continue to receive state funding for research), QR gives institutions the freedom to allow their researchers and teachers to fulfil both roles. It is naive to think that this government would continue to fund universities in this way without a procedure like REF. So, I don’t like REF, but I accept it as the pragmatic/political compromise negotiated with a centre-right government to continue funding. This is my view of a messy political compromise, not my pure ideal.

The problem is that there are now several different ideologies competing here and the government must weigh its alleigance to each before deciding what route to pursue to achieve its aims. While Johnson says that he is “committed to the maintenance of dual funding support”, i.e. Research Councils and QR, something has to give. So, the ideologies competing are:

An ideology of cost-effectiveness
An ideology of deregulation
An ideology of strategy

REF/QR is cost-effective compared to the Research Councils:

The REF assessed the outputs and impact of HEI research supported by many types of funders. In the context of £27bn total research income from public sources in the UK over a six-year period, the £246M total cost for REF 2014 is less than 1%. In the context of dual support, the total cost amounts to roughly 2.4% of the £10.2 billion in research funds expected to be distributed by the UK’s funding bodies in the six years, 2015-16 to 2020-21. This compares with an estimate of the annual cost to the UK HE community for peer review of grant applications of around £196M or around 6% of the funds distributed by the Research Councils.

So there’s a drive to maintain REF and QR for cost effectiveness.

But REF/QR has been massively slammed by academics as “bureaucratic and burdensome”, so it doesn’t fit the ideology of deregulation (however contradictory). Furthermore, REF/QR can’t be directed, as can Research Council funding; institutions can spend it on whatever research projects they like.

So the government has to work out what it really wants. If there is to be state funding for research, does it value a cost-effective route (REF.); a de-regulated route (maybe Research Councils? Or just cut REF but keep QR? Yeah, right.); or a route that it can control (Research Councils)?

Finally, the Research Council rejection rate is massive. Only a small number of applications go through. If we’re all forced to apply for funding via this route because there is no QR, then this will get even worse. Research funding will only be available at a very small number of places as concentration rises. This protects the golden triangle while exposing everyone else.

In conclusion

Johnson said, in his speech, that he has “no target for the ‘right’ size of the higher education system”. However, we can infer from this that he does not believe the size to be “right” at the moment because of all the changes he wants to make. Indeed, he said that we need changes to ensure “that more [people going to university] does not mean worse [quality of education]”, which presumably is what he thinks happens at the moment. I speculate, from reading this talk:

that the government continues its policy of protecting prestigious institutions while sharpening severe financial competition among all others.
that TEF is a financial move, not a teaching quality move, even if you think that teaching should be better rewarded in the academy.
that real-term de-funding of existing institutions through TEF will be the way in which the expansion of private providers is regulated.
that as long as the student loan system stands, the government can have it both ways: it can claim that it does not fund universities and that this is private income, even while having a regulatory say over them because taxpayers “underwrite” the RAB charge.
that REF/QR and the Research Councils are up for debate but the government is to use academics’ calls for its abolition as a justification to cut QR.
that there are several competing motivations for the government’s actions in the research funding space that it must weigh.
that the stability of operation for many institutions is to be upset.
that the talk of de-regulation here is only possible by the introduction of massive new regulatory bodies.

Dr Martin Eve

None of this is new, of course. I haven’t here, also, gone into liberal humanist defences of the university, of which we will surely see many in the light of this talk. I find myself supportive of the goal to get a more diverse student body – I can’t argue with that, just the methods by which it might be achieved. For instance, while there are talks of supporting those who don’t go through a “traditional route” to HE, the government’s recent policies on funding led to a period of severe financial difficulties for institutions like Birkbeck that cater exclusively for those non-traditional students. So, again, the rhetoric is confused.

But now we have it from the Minister and I suspect we will see action on the ground very soon.

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Refugee Crisis on the Tiny Island of Leros

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This post was contributed by Dr Julie Peakman, honorary fellow at Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology. Dr Peakman is currently in Leros, Greece, on a research trip for her next book, but is also volunteering at the port police, offering help for refugees.

Leros is currently experiencing a huge influx of refugees – mainly Syrian and Afghan – arriving on its shores. Here, Dr Peakman writes for Birkbeck Blogs about her volunteering activity and the situation on Leros.

Refugees gather in Leros, Greece (picture courtesy of Anne Tee)

Yesterday morning when we arrived at the port police, there were three-hundred refugees waiting in the hot sun in Lakki police station without food or water.

They had been given no food last night and the only thing they had eaten was the croissants and biscuits volunteers had given them the morning before. It is a tinderbox waiting to be lit.

The police say they have no money to pay the restaurants so the restaurants will no longer supply food as they have not been paid (only five euros per refugee, but it was something). There are only a handful of port police struggling to cope with the situation. The government has no money to send the police. Even the simple basic of water is not being supplied by the authorities.

The water tank for the refugees has not been filled for days and we wonder why this has not yet happened. The police had to take the water which volunteers had bought down to Lakki port over to more refugees in Xerocampus, at the other side of the island. These poor people are lying in the streets with nowhere to sleep while a building stands empty waiting for plumbing to be connected. This would take a couple of hours.

There is one young woman from the United Nations who says she only gives verbal advice to the refugees to tell them their rights. When I asked her why the United Nations Refugee Council are not doing anything to send food, water, shelter or clothes, she said the United Nations has not declared the situation a humanitarian crisis and she said that is the policy made in Geneva.

Refugees gather in Leros, Greece (picture courtesy of Anne Tee)

Meanwhile, my wonderful friends, Chris Angiel, Stella H Perlman and Patrick Muldowney made 200 sandwiches to give out to those who had no money and could not leave the station as they had not been ‘processed’.

Donations of juice, milk, nappies, soap, clothes and new flip flops were given out to as many people as we could. A wonderful Dutch couple have collected clothes from all their fellow yachties to give out to refugees. After four hours working with Patrick and a stalwart of the action Anne Tee in cramped and hot conditions, most of the refugees had at least been fed and watered. Anne goes down every morning and evening.

I am afraid I welled up when one of the people who spoke English came over and said on behalf of everyone there they would like to thank me and the other volunteers for our help. I felt very humble. The miracle worker behind all this organisation is Martina Katsiveli who is struggling to get a building opened for the refugees so they can have showers and toilet facilities. At the moment, they have one toilet.

View the Guardian’s report of the migrant crisis in Leros

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Pictures courtesy of Anne Tee

“It’s a story of sex, scandal and divorce”: Bringing ‘The Scandalous Lady W’ to the screen

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This post was contributed by Andrew Youngson, media and publicity officer for Birkbeck, University of London

Natalie Dormer stars as Lady Seymour Worsley (C) Wall to Wall Productions Ltd – Photographer: Laurence Cendrovitz

In summer 2011, a book written by author and historian, Hallie Rubenhold, arrived at playwright and Birkbeck lecturer David Eldridge’s door.

‘Lady Worsley’s Whim’ (as Rubenhold’s book was known before being republished as ‘The Scandalous Lady W’), told the nigh-unbelievably-dramatic story of Seymour Worsley, an 18^th century British noblewoman who was at the centre of a scandalous court case.

In 1782, when Lady W’s husband, Sir Richard Worsley, brought a ‘criminal conversation’ case against her lover – George M Bisset – it backfired. In retaliation, Lady W disclosed to the court and the media many shocking details of her marriage with Sir Richard – including the 27 lovers she had kept in total, in large part to satiate the voyeuristic desires of her husband.

It was a court case which wouldn’t look out of place in the pages of today’s tabloids, but for the time, it was incendiary stuff.

David received Hallie’s book through a circuitous route, with his old professor from Exeter University recommending him to her as a playwright of real talent, and who, alongside his own original work, was ever on the lookout for works to adapt for the stage and screen.

“The morning after the book arrived, I was meant to be doing something else,” David explained to me as we sat together in his office at Birkbeck’s School of Arts where he lectures in creative writing.

“I began to read and I couldn’t stop. It was brilliant. It was just a fantastic story. One of those stories that felt genuinely extraordinary and unique. I keep thinking my memory plays tricks, but looking back through archived emails, I see I did write to Hallie that evening: ‘I’m enjoying your book hugely. I’ll be in touch’.”

Four years later, Seymour Worsley’s story is set to be told to a fresh audience, this time in the form of a 90 minute BBC drama, ‘The Scandalous Lady W’, starring Game of Thrones and The Tudors actor, Natalie Dormer.

In the run up to the drama’s transmission date of Monday 17 August at 9pm on BBC 2, I spoke to David about the gripping real-life story, the process of bringing it to the screen, and what lies ahead for the prolific playwright and screenwriter.

Hi David. What was your main aim in writing this piece and how does it link to Hallie Rubenhold’s book?

The aim was just to tell the story really well in dramatic form. One of the things that’s very interesting about Hallie’s book is that she’s done something quite unusual in terms of its narrative: she withholds information, which is really a fiction writer’s trick.

For example, in the court trial which is at the centre of the story, there’s a big reveal. Hallie tried to find a way to replicate that in her history book. That’s not the kind of thing a historian would usually do in a nonfiction book. Normally you just set out the facts in chronological order. So I thought that was very interesting, and something I could develop in the script.

What did you want to achieve in writing about the central female character, Seymour Worsley?

One of the things that appealed to me was that Seymour Worsley acted in a very modern way for the time. It took great courage, because she was trying to fight a legal battle, but also overcome the expectations of polite and fashionable society of the time.

I’ve done a lot of research into the work of Henrik Ibsen, and I saw Seymour in this same light. Like Ibsen’s heroines she’s very complex. She was used by her husband in terms of his sexual peccadilloes, but she also revelled in her own sexuality. She wanted to live an unconventional way of life with her husband – although it was hidden from view – and also wanted to break out of that and to have her freedom to live as a ‘Modern’. But on the other hand, she also wanted the conventionality of a marriage with George Bisset.

So she’s a very complex character. She does some things in the course of the story that are hard to admire. You can admire her courage and chutzpah, but then she really did humiliate her husband, and also left her three-month-old daughter at home. And I think that’s where a lot of the tension is in the film: you really do admire her, but equally there are moments when you question her.

(L-r) Aneurin Barnard as Captain George Bisset, Natalie Dormer as Seymour Worsley, and Shaun Evans as Sir Richard Worsley (C) Wall to Wall Productions Ltd

The press coverage in the run up to the film’s broadcast has focused a lot on the sex and scandal of the story. How does that sit with you?

I think it’s right, because that’s what it’s about. It is about sex, scandal and divorce, though of course it’s about other things as well. But she did after all have – including Captain Bissett who she eloped with – 27 lovers. And her husband did have voyeuristic tendencies. But also, the way that the press has covered it, I don’t think that’s obscured other elements. They have talked about common law and ‘criminal conversation’ at the time. I don’t think those things have been ignored.

What role did you play during the production process itself?

Although I wasn’t executive producer, I was treated a bit like one. I was involved in all of the creative decisions that were particularly relevant. In TV, one of the things that’s very different than writing for theatre is that it’s about working with the practical circumstances of the shoot, both in terms of budget and locations. As writer, I did four set visits during the three weeks of shooting.

But your role is more about being at the end of the phone or email. For example you might need to rewrite something if it’s going to be too expensive to shoot, or if a particular location allows you to do something much more with it. As a writer you are responding to the practical issues of making the film. Screenwriting is always an artistic process, but it’s an incredibly practical and pragmatic craft.

You must have been delighted that Natalie Dormer was cast in the lead role. What has she brought to it?

First and foremost, she’s perfect for the role. She’s really brought the impetuousness, sexiness and naivety, but also a really principled core which is really important to this role. She’s absolutely a team player and she really believes in the character. She’s really passionate about the themes of the film and what they say about the role of women at that time.

Is it strange hearing the words you have written spoken out loud?

Not anymore, no. When I first started, when I had my first plays on back in the ‘90s, it was very strange. But it’s part of the joy of it now. It’s what it’s all about. I write the script, but it’s not a drama until it’s embodied by a performance.

What’s next for you?

There are a couple of things I can talk about. I’m adapting (Birkbeck colleague) Benjamin Wood’s first novel, The Bellweather Revivals, for BBC films. It’s a really great book. And I’m also adapting a contemporary novel for the West End, for a show with the Michael Grandage Company.

David Eldridge (C) Photographer: Keith Pattison

That sounds exciting. Is the ideal situation for you to be constantly alternating between writing for the stage and screen?

I’d like that, yes. I’m the kind of writer who does maybe one completely original piece every 18 months, but I have a lot more energy for writing than that. So the question is, ‘what do I do in the meantime’? The answer has been in ‘found stories’ – things I read about, true stories, and novels I would like to adapt because they would make good dramas.

Lastly, how does your teaching role at Birkbeck fit into the broader picture of your career?

I’m about to start my fourth year as a part-time lecturer at Birkbeck, but I’ve always done a lot of teaching throughout my career. It’s very important to me in my own practice and craft. The very act of teaching and communicating leads me to reflect on my own practice and to change my own ideas with what works and what doesn’t.

Plus it’s wonderful for the student too.

One of the things that’s really great about the teaching staff on the creating courses here is that we’re all professional writers who are making work now. It’s not a programme taught by washed-up writers who have decided to go into education. I think it’s really important that our students are benefiting from being taught by lecturers who are doing in the real world what we are asking them to do in the seminar room.

The Scandalous Lady W will be aired on BBC 2 at 9pm on Monday 17 August

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Insomnia and Interpreters – Linguistic Aspects of the Greek negotiations

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This post was contributed by Professor Penelope Gardner-Chloros, Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication

Last month, you may remember, while Mr Cameron was giving his views in the news on the crucial matter of fox hunting, Greece was on the brink of financial meltdown.

I was in Greece and with the banks closed and the prospect of worse to come, the sentence I kept hearing from friends and relatives was ‘I can’t sleep’. The local baker, who was lucky enough to be selling his bread to hotels, did not have the liquidity to pay his flour supplier, a small farmer. As a tourist, when you paid your bills with cash, people were abnormally grateful, though much too proud to say why. It seemed that a whole country was holding its breath while a roomful of people in Brussels decided their fate.

Such momentous decisions depend, like so much else in our lives, on language – on a group of people talking, in an airless conference room. How do their minds – and their meanings – meet? Sometimes with difficulty.

You need only read the pronouncements of the – now disgraced – Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, to realize how culturally inappropriate rhetoric can exacerbate a crisis. It was not so much Greek bravado in his case – though that was present too. His upfront Australian – trained braggadocio went down like the proverbial bag of sick with the Brussels bureaucrats.

He should perhaps have taken lessons in how to imply things without spelling them out in enormous capital letters from Christine Lagarde, who went on record for saying that the negotiations could only get anywhere if there were adults in the room. Hmmmm…

Relay interpreting

Spare a thought also for the fact that these meetings would have been conducted with what is known as a ‘full regime’. This means that each country had interpretation from and into their own language – there are 23 languages.

So while some people would have been speaking and listening to, say, English, the majority would have been speaking another language and having their words translated into 22 languages. They would also, of course, have been listening to the words of the main protagonists through interpreters.

Furthermore, when there is no interpreter who is able to translate from Greek directly into, say, Italian, the Italian interpreter listens to, for example, the English interpreter, and then translates the English into Italian. This system is known as ‘relay interpreting’.

Occasionally, double relay has to be used: for example if the Dutch interpreter does not speak French, she or he has to listen to someone in another booth, say German, who is themselves getting the Greek translated by someone in the French booth. It does not take much imagination to appreciate the inevitable loss of accuracy, of nuance, and of metaphorical ‘tone of voice’ – three things which really matter in such delicate negotiations.

Cross-linguistic, cross-cultural talk

As a former interpreter, I wonder how the interpreters coped with the German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble telling the head of the ECB, Mario Draghi, that he was ‘not an idiot’. They would have been caught between the ostensible need to be accurate and the need to avoid being the cause of a diplomatic incident – the latter concern being part of their DNA, if not a specific part of their professional training.

And what of the order by the Head of the European Council, after 14 hours of unsuccessful talking, ‘Sorry, but there is no way you are leaving the room’. How did that come out in Finnish, in Slovakian, in Spanish, in Danish…and in Greek?

The cross-linguistic, cross-cultural talk in that room would truly be worthy of analysis – what a PhD that could make! For the time being though, I am just glad that the messages got across well enough, and tactfully enough, so that my baker can pay for his flour again.

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Read the BBC’s recent round-up of some of the greatest mistranslations throughout history

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“It’s a story of sex, scandal and divorce”: Bringing ‘The Scandalous Lady W’ to the screen