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W. Kristjanson

Autor/a de The Icelandic people in Manitoba

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Obres de W. Kristjanson

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I have no idea how a copy of this little book (printed in Winnipeg in 1935) made it into my collection, but there it is: a slightly self-indulgent but pleasant little book of reminiscences of Oxford during the academic year of 1925-6, by a Canadian IODE scholar at what was then the Non-Collegiate Society (later St Catherine's College). The book is simply a series of short vignettes, beginning with a late September evening at the Station Hotel, and gives a fair, if romanticized impression of Oxford at a time when it was still the intellectual heart of the British Empire. The author seems to have made good use of his time, living in digs by the Thames, attending lectures by various noted historians and economists of the day, rowing for St Catherine's (who regrettably he records as bumping my own college during Eights Week), and visiting the church at Cumnor with much allusion to Scott's Kenilworth and the fate of Amy Robsart (whose name suffers from the rather patchy proof-reading and appears as "Robsort"). He recounts good-natured debates at the Union on topics such as the relative merits of Britain and America or whether the rise of Mussolini was a good or bad thing. Like many at that date, Kristjanson was older than modern undergraduates, having served in the First World War and matriculated at 29, and he mentions as friends and acquaintances mainly other international students from Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the U.S. (The presence of women in Oxford on an equal basis is a notable contrast with the Oxford of 1914 depicted in John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War.) I presume Manitoba did not have much of a racial mix, since the author (of Icelandic stock) was clearly fascinated by the number of "well-favoured" Indian students in Oxford at the time. Other interesting moments include a visiting lecture from G.K. Chesterton (fulminating genially against free verse), a fleeting allusion to the race question in South Africa, and memories of the Vimy Ridge intruding on the thoughts of a rower before a race. Though the author occasionally indulges in a little provincial hauteur concerning the lack of aggressive college spirit and self-confidence of British students, he gives an affectionate portait of a place that obviously caught him in its spell, as it has so many others.

MB 24-ix-2012
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MyopicBookworm | Sep 24, 2012 |

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