Latest news with #BalliolCollege
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Bleary eyed students head home after Oxford University's prestigious £165-a-ticket Balliol College May Ball
Bleary-eyed Oxford University students were pictured making their way home from a May Ball in the early hours of this morning. Revellers donned ball gowns and bow ties as they ambled through the town's historic streets following the Star Crossed Lovers themed event at Balliol College. The night ran from 8pm until 4am when those who stayed to the end had a 'survivor's photo' before making their way home. One trio of stragglers were seen munching on sandwiches as they tried to refuel themselves for the journey back. Meanwhile, another group, including a man holding a croquet mallet, wheeled a wagon carrying crates of unused beer down the road. Others clutched their shoes as they tried to give their tired feet a rest while one woman hitched a ride on a friend's shoulders. Some chose to cycle home, with one cheerful pair beaming and waving at the camera as they pedaled away. Early on Saturday evening excited students wearing masquerade masks lined up along Broad Street in the city centre as they waited for the doors to open. The night's headliner was early 2000's band, Toploader known for hits like 'Dancing in the Moonlight'. Revellers donned ball gowns and bow ties as they ambled through the town's historic streets following the Star Crossed Lovers themed event at Balliol College. One trio of stragglers were pictured munching on sandwiches as they tried to refuel themselves for the journey back The lavish event boasted a silent disco, dancers and even a rave room pumping out techno into the surrounding streets. Drone footage captured what was happening behind the prestigious university's walls and showed the different stages and areas of the ball. In one aerial image the campus resembles a festival - with colorful strobes lighting up the courtyards. The sold out Balliol Ball had tickets that included food, drink and various games and music acts were available for Alumni students for £165. The college, which is the oldest in the city and founded in 1263, was where Boris Johnson and Rory Stewart studied. Various other Oxford Colleges also had their balls on the same evening, including Lady Margaret Hall where attendees were also seen making their way home at 5am. In recent months, some colleges from Cambridge have shunned the traditional May Ball for lesser garden parties or discos as prices spiraled and left many students unable to afford tickets. In February Robinson College announced it was going to scrap the extravagant bash - in favour of hosting a 'more accessible and inclusive' event instead. With entry to the previously annual Ball setting students back as much as £270, the institute opted for an 'alternative' event which it hopes will have more appeal. Early on Saturday evening excited students wearing masquerade masks lined up along Broad Street in the city centre as they waited for the doors to open The sold out Balliol Ball had tickets that included food, drink and various games and music acts available for Alumni students for £165 The night's headliner was early 2000's band, Toploader known for hits like 'Dancing in the Moonlight' Robinson College, which is Cambridge's newest college having been founded in 1977, will now hold a 'mega bop' in June in place of the May Ball. This new event will retain the original Ball's 'film noir' theme, but will see tickets made available to all Cambridge University undergraduates at much cheaper prices. It is believed that the May Ball has struggled in recent years to attract Cambridge students, with the lofty £270 ticket prices turning off many young people as they endure increased living costs. Ticket sales were in fact so poor in 2019 that the event was cancelled altogether. A statement on the Robinson May Ball committee's social media said that the decision had been made to cancel this year's event to 'ensure as many students as possible' can enjoy the college's new 'mega bop'.
Telegraph
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Robert Peston: ‘Liz Truss looked broken when I told her she'd trashed the Tories'
Born in 1960, Robert Peston read philosopy, politics and economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and began his career as a stockbroker in the City, before shifting direction to journalism. After spells at The Independent, the Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph, he became the BBC's business editor in 2005, and broke multiple scoops during the 2007 and 2008 financial crisis. After two years as economics editor, he left the BBC in 2015 to become ITV's political editor, launching his show Peston on Sunday – later renamed simply Peston – in 2016. He has one son, Max, with his late wife, Siân, who died in 2012, and is in a long-term relationship with Guardian journalist Charlotte Edwardes. Best childhood memory? We always did Passover with my grandparents, Joe and Rose, my great-aunt and uncle and sometimes their grandchildren. It was always a big, bustling, chaotic meal, partly because my dad, who died in 2016, was an arch rationalist and thought all religion was hocus-pocus. He never rejected his Jewish heritage, though, so there was always this slight sense of tension at Jewish, semi-religious events. It was one of those occasions where the whole family felt unified and came together, and every single year horrifically undrinkable red wine got spilt over my grandmother's pristine white tablecloth. And the great thing about our kind of chaotic Judaism is that although traditional Passover meals can go on for hours before you eat anything, we always rushed through the religious stuff straight into my grandmother's rather extraordinary chopped liver and roast chicken. Best day of your life? I know it's a cliché, but it would have to be the day my son, Max, was born. There are certain events in your life that are imprinted on your memory in an astonishingly indelible way. He was born at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and my late wife hadn't found either of her pregnancies easy [she also had a son from a previous relationship], and the day that he was born, I just felt an overwhelming sense of happiness. Best political interview? Looking back, it feels more like an event than an interview, but during the day that Liz Truss sacked her chancellor, she did a press conference, and I was the last person to ask a question. I said, 'You've trashed the Conservative Party 's arguably only asset, which is its reputation for financial and economic competence. Do you want to apologise?' It was a really painful moment because she just froze and I actually thought she was going to burst into tears – it was one of those moments that I just thought, 'Oh my God, I've gone too far,' as in the end, even though it's my job to hold people to account, one is not immune to people's humanity. Whatever one thinks about her performance as prime minister, she just looked utterly broken. She did her normal thing of not apologising and sidestepped the question, then she just walked off the stage. It was the shortest press conference ever. It felt like a very big and dramatic moment. Best personality trait? That I don't give up. The thing that's always driven me is getting scoops, and I've written about that addiction to getting scoops in both my thrillers, The Whistle Blower and The Crash. You've got to have a curious mind about what's going on in the world that might interest people, but also you have to keep going. If you get knocked back, you've got to pick yourself up and carry on and be persistent. And that's what I do; I just keep going. Best thing about OCD and ADHD? I had quite serious obsessive-compulsive disorder as a teenager and although I've never been formally diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I've self-diagnosed myself with it, but the one great advantage it does give me is the ability to hyper-focus. If I've got a project that I really care about, for example writing a book or finishing an investigation, I can focus on it and screen out pretty much every bit of noise, which is very helpful professionally but incredibly frustrating for family and friends who care about me, because they can struggle to get in. Best decision? Moving away from print journalism into broadcasting is certainly the most important career decision I've made. When the job as business editor at the BBC came up immediately before the financial crisis, because I'd been City editor at The Sunday Telegraph and I had a good understanding of banks and financial markets from my earlier career, I was in good position to get lots of scoops about it and I immediately became a much more visible and, I suppose, much more famous journalist and broadcaster than I might have been if I'd taken that job in quieter times. So it was a very lucky break, and I could never have known that it would transform my life quite as much as it did. Best advice you've ever received? My dad was obsessed with the concept of there being no point crying over spilt milk. You just move on. In economics that's an important concept, where if something's failing and you decide to change direction there's no point worrying about that sunk cost. That spilt milk. You have to consider what the additional costs might be. More importantly, it's an incredibly important concept for life. We all make mistakes, and we have a temptation – and I know I do this – that when we've made mistakes, we learn from it, you try not to do it again, but at that point you regard it as spilt milk, but you write it off and then you get on with your life. Worst childhood memory? The only thing that does quietly haunt me – and my sister, Juliet, says she doesn't remember this – but I was the older brother, and I was very mean to her a lot. I remember teasing her in a really horrible way and it fills me with absolute horror. It still fills me with a sense of shame. I've repeatedly apologised to her, and she says she can't remember, which is great, so I suppose I'm torturing myself for no reason, which is the story of my life. I spend my life torturing myself. Worst moment of your life? Being with my late wife, Siân, as she died. She was only 51 at the time. She didn't want to die. At that time, I was sleeping on the floor of the hospice that she was in, just holding her hand while she died. Frankly it was pretty awful. Worst television experience? There are endless examples, but two stand up as particularly terrible. First, when my show was on a Sunday morning, we had Miriam Margolyes on and she got quite heated and turned to me and said there was something she wanted to say about a particular person, and my producer in my ear shouted, 'Whatever you do, don't let her say what she's thinking,' and I misheard and said, 'Say whatever you want,' then at 10 in the morning on a Sunday she used the C-word very loudly and we had to spend the rest of the programme apologising. And I know it's a bit of a cliché, but I did the Jeremy Hunt mispronunciation too – I think every broadcaster has at some point – and on election night recently, I misidentified the former Conservative minister Gillian Keegan as the actress Gillian Anderson at 3am; fortunately she took it very well. Worst thing anyone has said about you? I'm pretty thick-skinned, actually. I care about what the people I care about say and think about me, but you can't do what I do if you take the barrage of noise that comes your way on social media and be affected by it. I'm pretty prominent on social media and to stay relatively sane you can't get upset by the vicious things people say. I just screen it out, as you become a lightning rod for people's anger – and their anger is normally about other things in their lives but they've decided they're going to crystallise it by saying something disgusting and hurtful about you. It's impossible to do what I do if you don't have a pretty rhino-like hide. Worst personality trait? Hyper focus is a double-edged sword. My ability to screen out things and people enables me to be incredibly productive, but I can be not attuned enough and sensitive enough to the needs of the people I care about. Historically I have definitely lived my life in different compartments, so the thing I've been trying to do is break down those psychological walls so that even if I am engaged in some kind of work project, I'm still hearing and listening to those whom I care about when they need me. Am I succeeding? Look, it's a work in progress. That's for others to judge, but I recognise it's something I need to do. Worst decision you've ever made? I've made tons of dumb relationship decisions in my life, but professionally I left journalism to try a dotcom thing in about 1999 or 2000 and it was a mistake. I'm a journalist to my core and I was really miserable for a year or two. I don't often get depressed, but I actually was then.
Telegraph
25-03-2025
- Telegraph
The epic but unknown alternative to Scotland's North Coast 500
Scotland's North Coast 500 has rightly been described as one of the world's great driving routes, but has, to a degree, become a victim of its own success and can get uncomfortably busy at peak season. For those eager to experience the beauty of Scotland without the crowds there is an alternative. The South West Coast 300 (SWC 300) takes in some of Scotland's most sublime scenery, mountains, forests, sandy beaches, castles, gardens, quiet Georgian towns, and an abundance of history. The southern section of the SWC 300 runs through two of Britain's most beautiful yet least-known counties, Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire, which together make up the Galloway segment of Dumfries and Galloway. Settled in the eighth century by Gaelic-speaking tribes from Ireland, Galloway feels set apart from the rest of Scotland, possessing its own distinctive mood and character. Kirkcudbrightshire (pronounced Kirk-coo-bree-shire) begins across the River Nith from Dumfries. The north of the county is wild and hilly, home to southern Scotland's highest peak, Merrick (2764ft or 842m above sea level) and Britain's largest forest, Galloway Forest Park, 300 square miles of woodland, waterfalls, mountains and lochs alive with otters, red deer, squirrels and kites. At the head of the list to become Britain's newest national park, in 2009 Galloway Forest Park was designated as the UK's first Dark Sky Park as there is so little human habitation that there is no light pollution to obscure the night sky. On the southern edge of the park, overlooking beautiful Loch Trool, stands Bruce's Stone, a huge granite boulder that commemorates Robert the Bruce's first victory over the English here in March 1307 during the Scottish War of Independence. The south of the county overlooks the Solway Firth, a land of salt marshes, wide bays and estuaries, dramatic headlands, golden sands and small, sturdy towns. Eight miles south of Dumfries are the magnificent ruins of New Abbey, founded in 1273 by Devorguilla, Lady of Galloway and mother of the puppet King of Scotland John Balliol. When her husband John, founder of Oxford 's Balliol College, died in 1268 she had his 'sweet heart' embalmed in an ivory casket that she carried around for the rest of her life. On her own death in 1290 the casket was buried with her before the altar at New Abbey, which became known as 'Sweetheart Abbey', thus giving a new word to the English language. Also buried there is William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England. Further south, standing on a windy promontory in the grounds of Arbigland House outside Kirkbean is a simple gardener's cottage, the birthplace in 1747 of John Paul Jones, 'Father of the American Navy'. It is now a museum in his honour. Emigrating to Virginia at the age of 13, Jones joined the Continental Navy and went on to mastermind the first victory of the American Navy over the Royal Navy at the Battle of Flamborough Head off the Yorkshire coast in 1779. The granite town of Dalbeattie boasts a memorial to local hero William Murdoch, First Lieutenant on the Titanic. Portrayed in the film Titanic as a coward, he was actually, according to eyewitness accounts, amazingly brave and saved many lives by guiding passengers to the lifeboats at the cost of his own life. In 1998, the film company's vice president came to Dalbeattie to deliver an apology. Just outside Castle Douglas, an elegant Georgian market town laid out by merchant William Douglas in 1792, stands Threave Castle, one of the mightiest towers in Scotland and stronghold of the Black Douglases who ruled Galloway during the 14th and 15th centuries. Set on an island in the middle of the River Dee it can only be reached by boat. On the coast to the south, an air of melancholy hangs about the impressive ruins of Dundrennan Abbey, founded in 1142 by David I. Mary, Queen of Scots spent her last night in Scotland here after defeat at the Battle of Langside in 1568. Next morning she made her way down to a creek on the Solway Firth, boarded a fishing boat and sailed away to England, never to return. Kirkcudbright, washed by the Gulf Stream and possessed of a special quality of light, is known as 'The Artist's Town' and supports a flourishing colony of painters and craftsmen whose work is shown in local galleries. The houses are gaily painted and the streets wide and breezy. The village scenes from the cult 1973 film The Wicker Man were filmed in the town. Graceful Gatehouse of Fleet is watched over by a tall Victorian clocktower while, perched atop a rocky knoll on the edge of town, is Cardoness Castle, a well-preserved 15th-century tower house, pretty much impregnable and blessed with far-reaching views across the bay. The coast road between Gatehouse of Fleet and the little harbour village of Creetown was accurately described by Thomas Carlyle, in conversation with Queen Victoria, as 'the finest road in her kingdom'. In the 19th century, Dalbeattie granite was exported all over the world from Creetown, helping to build the Thames Embankment and Sydney Harbour. At Newton Stewart we enter Wigtownshire, Scotland's extreme south-west, a windswept county of moorland, big skies, birdsong – and books. Wigtown, the county town, is Scotland's National Book Town, home to Scotland's biggest second-hand bookshop and a well attended annual book festival. The airy streets have a scholarly feel to them and there is a spacious market place with colourful gardens and a bowling green watched over by the flamboyant old County Buildings, now housing the town library and museum. South of the town is the Bladnoch Distillery, Scotland's most-southerly whisky distillery, open for tours and tastings from Wednesdays to Saturdays. Wigtown is gateway to the mysterious Machars, a flat peninsula thrusting out into the Irish Sea, dotted with lonely churches, pretty villages, hidden beaches and mossy cliffs. Here is Whithorn, the cradle of Scottish Christianity where, in 397 AD, after a pilgrimage to Rome, Scotland's first Christian missionary St Ninian built, and was later buried beneath, Scotland's first stone church. It was painted white so that it could be seen from a distance and was known as the Candida Casa or White House, from which Whithorn gets its name. The nave and crypt of a 12th-century cathedral built over St Ninian's shrine survive. Away to the west: a peaceful walk through woods leads to a pebbly beach and St Ninian's Cave, where the saint came for solitude. On the walls are Christian crosses carved by 8th-century pilgrims. On the clifftop at Burrow Head to the south, the wooden stumps of the Wicker Man's legs mark where the final gruesome scenes from the film of that name were shot. Hidden in woods at Kirkmaiden there is a small chapel where members of the local landowners, the Maxwell family, are buried, while on the hillside above stands a bronze otter, sculpted by Penny Wheatley in honour of Gavin Maxwell, author of Ring of Bright Water, who was born nearby at Elrig, a big grey house on the moor. The Sands of Luce, a long crescent of golden beach, lead to the hammerhead-shaped peninsula known as the Rhins of Galloway. To the north, Stranraer, ferries to Northern Ireland, and Castle Kennedy Gardens gathered about the ruins of a 15th-century castle noted for rhododendrons and azaleas. To the south, Logan Botanic Garden, where tropical plants flourish in the warm winds of the Gulf Stream. Nearby, at Port Logan, is Britain's oldest natural marine aquarium, a tidal fishpond scooped out of the cliffs in 1788 as a sea fish larder for the local laird. Some of the inhabitants, which include cod, pollock, turbot, mullet and hermit crabs, are quite tame and can rise to the surface to be fed by hand. A mile south is Drummore, Scotland's most-southerly village, a delightful collection of white-washed cottages running uphill from a sandy beach and beyond that, Scotland's furthest south, the Mull of Galloway, further south indeed than Durham. Here, Scotland ends in solitary, spectacular style with cliffs 300 feet high, a lighthouse and views, they say, of five kingdoms, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland (the Hebrides), England (the Lake District), and the Kingdom of Heaven.
BBC News
19-02-2025
- General
- BBC News
Oxford walking tour explores Sikh stories in city
A free community event that explores Sikh cultural heritage is returning to a city History on the Streets of Oxford is a four-hour walking tour focusing on Sikh and related Indian stories that link to colleges and historic sites around the city's centre. The walk, led by Rav Singh and Stephen Barker, will be held from 11:00 to 15:00, starting from the Ashmolean Singh said the tour covers a variety of topics, including women's history, contemporary people and prime ministers with Oxford connections. Mr Singh is the founder of community organisation A little History of the Sikhs, which weaves modern-day Sikh history and heritage research into walking tours, day trips and study said he had met Mr Barker, who is an Oxfordshire historian, in Blackwell's Bookshop in tour revolves around stories they have collected."We go to various colleges and museums and we just stop by and tell short stories of individuals from Sikh history or from the Punjab in India and their connections to Oxford in the spaces that these little histories took place," Mr Singh said Mr Barker's book The Flying Sikh: Hardit Singh Malik had served as "a centre" and more stories had been added Singh Malik studied at Balliol College, becoming the first person to join the RAF as a non-British officer, and fought in World War One."We cover women's history, modern history, contemporary people, people from the past, prime ministers - all linked to Oxford," Mr Singh Barker said the tour "also investigates why Indian nationals came to Britain in the latter half of the [19th] century; why the Indian Institute opened on Catte Street in 1896 and the ongoing connections between Balliol and South Asia". Mr Singh said people's eyes "light up" when they came across elements from the stories, such as the weather vane atop of The Indian Institute."Normally, we always see a cockerel but because it was a centre of learning of Indian studies, at the top it's an elephant."He said the tour would end at The Museum of Oxford, where a creative workshop would be led by artist artworks created during the workshop will be exhibited in the museum's 50th anniversary exhibition opening in April. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X, or Instagram.
Telegraph
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Pro-trans activists walk out of gender-critical author's Oxford talk
A group of pro-trans activists staged a walkout of a gender-critical author's talk at the University of Oxford. Journalist Helen Joyce, who describes herself as a 'sex realist' and declared perceived transgender ideology as 'the medical scandal of the 21st century', had just entered the Balliol College building on Thursday night when there was a mass exodus of attendees. Activists were seen holding aloft signs which included messages saying 'trans kids deserve better' and 'sex-based concerns are the thin end of the fascist wedge'. Ms Joyce, 56, had been invited to speak at the college's Philosophy Society to discuss transgender issues. Before the event, the journalist and author, who was previously an editor at The Economist, said that the 'crybullies' would think her 'mainstream and factual beliefs are the most extreme hatefulness'. More than 650 people have now signed a petition to 'protest transphobia' at the university, which it said was giving a 'platform [to] transphobic speakers'. Ms Joyce wrote the 2021 bestseller, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, and is also the director of advocacy at human rights charity, Sex Matters. She has been a vocal critic of trans women in women's sport and advocated for women's only spaces, as she claims that currently 'the desires of a tiny minority of men outweigh the rights of women'. At the talk, she was questioned about remarks she made in 2022, in which she suggested 'keeping down or reducing the number of people who transition to limit the harm done' and that those who believe in 'gender identity ideology' are a 'huge problem in the sane world'. 'That's going to be my epitaph, I'm very proud of myself,' Ms Joyce responded. Speaking of the empty seats left by the protesters against her talk, she continued: 'Look at this, it's absolute insanity. It is not good for you to cut off body parts or to take hormones. If you can live with the body you were born with, that's a better outcome. 'People who believe that men can be women and women can be men and believe in it sufficiently strongly that they act on it are rights destroying people. 'They are people who advocate for men to go into women's spaces… they advocate for children to be sterilised. 'If you believe you can tell children lies about what sex is and you can put children on the path to sterilisation before they are old enough to have an orgasm, you are… what I said was it was a 'huge problem in a sane world.'' But Charlie McEvoy, 23, who attended the event, told The Times: 'She [Joyce] loves to repeat the idea of ideology and imposition, but most transgender people don't want to be noticed. 'Transgender people at Oxford just want to live peacefully. I just want to live my life and be safe.' Balliol College's master told the university's student paper the event had been organised by a student society meaning it 'saw no grounds to refuse permission for the talk to take place'. Ms Joyce told The Telegraph she had been greeted with far less hostility than a previous university talk and believes things have got a 'lot better'. 'People with views that are unpopular on campus should get a good deal braver,' she said. 'The crybullies are still crying, but they are not bullying.' She said she would prefer if those who walked out had stayed in and engaged in discussion of the topic. 'They think that I'm some massive bigot,' she added. 'The thing is, most people think like I do – hardly anyone thinks what they do.'
