Personal pursuits

I have no reason to think that this would interest anyone very much, but I don’t spend all my time being a university President, and I do have other passions. The three main non-professional interests in my life are literature, music and photography.

From an early age I developed a liking for Victorian fiction, in part because I believe that it was an era that gave us most of the best writing in English. Authors like Dickens not only perfected the genre of the novel, but also addressed the major social, ethical, cultural and political issues of the day in a way that influenced both fashions and passions right up to today. Apart from Dickens, I love Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins and Anthony Trollope – the latter in my view a very underrated author. But I also like much contemporary fiction – I may do another blog entry on that shortly.

I am not really an artist in my own right, but if I were to make a claim for that at all, I would base it on my modest photography, which you can see here. If my work has any merit at all, it does at least create some business, as I have bought too much expensive photographic equipment.

However, it is music that more than anything else lets me be reflective and take a step back from daily pressures and concerns. I like all musical genres, more or less without exception – though clearly not all music is good.  I listen to a good deal of classical music, again mainly from the 19th century (but also from earlier and later periods). I listen to quite a lot of rock music – including (at random) AC/DC, Aerosmith, Queen, Whitesnake. I probably get most from alternative, indie music, and would recommend in particular the stunningly good A Fine Frenzy.

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Tags: literature, music, photography

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