|
|
| Dash of colour |
MAURICE BOWRA: A LIFE By Leslie Mitchell, Oxford, £25
Oxford engenders legends. Stories and rumours flourish and gain their own momentum of circulation. There are some characters, however, around whom stories and legends tend to cling. In the 20th century, the Oxford don who was the subject of the largest number of stories was Maurice Bowra. He came to New College after the First World War and remained in Oxford till his death in July 1971. Though he was a student of New College, it was Wadham College which was his real home. He was a fellow there and became its Warden, as the head of Wadham is called. He also served as pro-vice-chancellor of the university as well as its vice-chancellor. He was a man of immense energy, and during his time, he left his distinctive mark on many aspects of Oxford. He was also a classics scholar who left behind a formidable body of work that won him peer-group recognition. Bowra had his own circle of friends, a circle of which he was always at the centre. He attracted the best and brightest in Oxford and even in Cambridge and London. His life and work demand a biography even though it may not be of much interest outside a select group. Leslie Mitchell’s admirable book fills this gap. Mitchell makes no tall claims for Bowra but places him in the context of Oxford of the time. The commonest misconception about Bowra and his circle, even within Oxford, was that he and his friends led riotous lives full of parties, fun and not a little promiscuity. Bowra, for reasons best known to him, somewhat played up this misconception. He loved shocking people and hated prigs. Mitchell shows that Bowra was an exacting taskmaster who would accept nothing but the highest standards of hard work and excellence from his friends. He could be very cross when he detected laziness or lax standards. Even if some of the stories about Bowra are apocryphal — Mitchell scrupulously avoids recording the more salacious ones that go around Oxford quads and common rooms — it cannot be denied that he was a colourful personality. One misses that colour in this book. This book is dry; whatever Bowra may have been, he was certainly not dry.
ANIMAL SPIRITS: HOW HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY DRIVES THE ECONOMY, AND WHY IT MATTERS FOR GLOBAL CAPITALISM By George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Princeton, $24.95
Many believe that the ongoing global financial crisis cannot be adequately expressed by economic theory alone. Akerlof, professor of economics at Berkeley, and Shiller, professor at Yale, argue that there are powerful psychological forces at work. Ever-rising housing prices inspired blind faith and this was followed by the collapse of confidence in capital markets. Such phenomena are driven by what Akerlof and Shiller call “animal spirits”. The professors of economics in this book challenge the conventional wisdom regarding the global meltdown and argue for a new vision that will restore prosperity and also at the same time radically alter economic thinking. The term “animal spirits” is drawn from the writings of John Maynard Keynes on the Great Depression of 1929 and the changing psychology that led to the recovery that followed. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller believe that government policymaking is critical in recovering the idea of animal spirits. Markets cannot be left alone to make their own recovery. This book is a retrieval of Keynes and a critique of the doctrines of unalloyed free market.
