Oxford Literary Festival

One of the privileges of staying so close to Oxford is the ease with which one can attend interesting events at Oxford University. We are in town at the time of the Oxford Literary Festival so on Thursday I caught the bus from Wallingford to Saint Aldgate and Christchurch College, which hosts the Box Office for the event.

I selected and paid for two discussions: The Spying Game with presenters R Jeffrey Jones, C Mulley and C Morgan Jones; and Universal Values - Are they the basis for World Order by Paddy Ashdown and World Order.

I arrived a little late at the Sheldonian (see photo taken on my i-phone) for the first event so had to sit in 'the naughty seats' in the dress circle beyond the reach of the moving microphones so, probably fortunately, was excluded from asking questions. I know a little, a very little, about the intelligence services so I was able to pick up on the presentations pretty quickly.

As the program notes, four writers approached the spying game from different angles. Professor Rhodi Jones is described as an authority on the CIA and although he made sense it was impossible to tell from what he said the level of his authority. He focused on the Anglo American intelligence relationship some of which I witnessed during my two years on the JIC in the early 80s.  Clare Mulley wrote The Spy Who Loved, the story of Christine Glanville a Polish national who spied for the  allies during the Second World War. She was indignant about the treatment of Glanville after the war. Mark Husband, the former security correspondent  from the Financial Times, wrote trading Secrets.  Chris Morgan Jones, who worked for Kroll described as the 'world's largest investigation company', wrote his debut novel An Agent of Deceit based on his experience of Russian affairs in industrial espionage.

Questions ranged from 'who controls the spies' thought to a quest for 'the truth about Roger Collis'.

By the 4.00 p.m. session with Paddy Ashdown and 'leading academic and writer on the middle east' Dr Eugene Rogan, I was seated in a front row. However, like Rogan, I was overwhelmed or intimidated by the presence and force of Ashdown and unlike Rogan I stayed quiet.  Rogan argued that there are culture specific values, values that differ across cultures, and for which people are prepared to fight and die.  Ashdown believes that there are values shared across the globe, around the concept of respect for the individual, and that these common interests will help us provide the governance in in a multi-polar world. Along the way, Ashdown reminded us that for every murderous outrage committed by an Islamist, there were ten committed by extremist Christians.

I read something today that makes me want to side with Ashdown. It is in a book by the philosopher Alain de Botton entitled Religion for Atheists.  He examines the great traditions and values of major religions and argues that although they have not evolved out of shared cultural origins they are a response to the universal needs of the human psyche. He illustrates his case with reference to characteristics such as kindness.  in this case he refers to longings for comfort that are real and innate but which have been legitimated by the qualities of key figures in religion: Mary in Christianity, Isis in ancient Egypt, Demeter in Greece, Venus in Rome and Guan Yin in China.  he says that the need for comfort 'has become too closely identified with a need for Mary herself instead of being seen for what it really is: an appetite which began long before the gospels, originating at the very moment when the first child was picked up by his or her mother and soothed amid the darkness and cold of the first underground cave.'

On Saturday, I shall go to a talk by William Dalrymple.