Curated playlist
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
- Frederick S. BoasFrederick Samuel Boas lived for ninety-five years, long enough to see the study of early modern drama transform from a gentleman's hobby into a rigorous academic discipline. Born on the 24th of July 1862 in Belfast to a Jewish family, he…
- A. C. BradleyA. C. Bradley was once so dominant in the study of Shakespeare that a satirical poem imagined the playwright himself failing a civil service examination because he had not read his own critic. Written by Guy Boas and published in 1926, the…
- Adam SmithAdam Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory, and while discussing free trade, he walked straight into a huge tanning pit. Others had to help him climb back out. This was a man who once put bread and butter into a…
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died at 5:20 pm Pacific Standard Time on the 22nd of November 1963 - and almost nobody noticed. His death was overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which happened less than seven hours later that same day. The…
- David Wootton (historian)David Wootton published Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates in 2006. The title does not hedge. It names medicine's history of harm as a problem reaching all the way back to antiquity. Wootton was born on the 15th of January…
- Henry Edward ManningHenry Edward Manning died on the 14th of January 1892, and when his estate was settled, it came to just £3,527. For a man who had spent decades as the most powerful Catholic clergyman in England, the sum was remarkably modest. But it was…
- Jasper GriffinJasper Griffin coined a word that ended up in chemistry. That word, 'agostic', was later adopted by the organometallic chemist Malcolm Green to describe C-H-M interactions, a particular kind of chemical bond. Griffin was not a chemist. He…
- John HicksJohn Richard Hicks was born on the 8th of April 1904 in Warwick, England, and by the time he died on the 20th of May 1989, he had reshaped the way economists understand markets, welfare, and money itself. His father edited and part-owned…
- Arnold Toynbee (historian, born 1852)Arnold Toynbee died on the 9th of March 1883, aged thirty, after collapsing from exhaustion following two public lectures at St. Andrew's Hall on Oxford Street. He had pushed himself past the limits of a fragile body to rebut what he saw…
- William BeveridgeWilliam Beveridge died on the 16th of March 1963 with what his family reported as his last words: "I have a thousand things to do." He was 84. For a man who had spent six decades reshaping British society, the restlessness was fitting.…
- Alexis SandersonAlexis Sanderson is an English indologist whose scholarly life took a decisive turn when he left Oxford and spent six years in Kashmir learning from a Shaiva guru. That choice shaped a career spent recovering one of the most complex…
- H. J. RoseHerbert Jennings Rose once sat at Board 1 in a cable match between American and English universities. On the 23rd of March 1907, he drew his game against the famous J. R. Capablanca. He was also said to have been the first Oxford…
- Jed S. RakoffJed S. Rakoff keeps a baseball signed by Mariano Rivera in a glass case on his desk. It is a small, telling detail about a man who has spent decades presiding over some of the most consequential legal battles in American life. He has ruled…
- John KeeganJohn Keegan spent 26 years teaching war to men who would fight it, yet he himself never fired a shot in anger. Born in Clapham, London, on the 15th of May 1934, Keegan contracted orthopaedic tuberculosis at age 13, a condition that damaged…
- Robert SoutheyRobert Southey arrived at Balliol College, Oxford, carrying, by his own account, a head full of Rousseau and Werther and a heart full of poetry. His religious convictions had already been rattled by Gibbon. He was eighteen, ambitious, and…
- James BurnhamJames Burnham was born in Chicago on the 22nd of November 1905, the son of an English railroad executive, and he died on the 28th of July 1987 in Kent, Connecticut, having spent the intervening decades confounding nearly every political…
- George SteinerFrancis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use it as an able-bodied person would. She believed self-pity was nauseating and…