This article is taken from the August-September 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
It is well that there are palaces of peace
And discipline and dreaming and desire,
Lest we forget our heritage and cease
The Spirit’s work — to hunger and aspire.
Returning from the horrors of the First World War to University College, Oxford, C.S. Lewis celebrated that city’s otherworldly serenity in his first collection of poems. Elected a fellow of Magdalen in 1925, he cherished that post for three decades before trading places — and orthography — for a final decade at Magdalene, Cambridge.
Were Lewis now, a century on, to wander around the courts and cloisters of these two great medieval universities he might marvel at how little has changed. Yes, some rather distasteful buildings have sprung up; yes, sartorial standards have slipped; and, yea verily, women are as common a sight as men. But were he to sit through an evening at High Table, or watch the goings-on at Governing Body, he would realise with dismay how much damage had been done to the very quintessence of the Oxbridge college — fellowship. How, he might ask, have we got here, and what can still be salvaged for these “palaces of peace”?
✺
A college makes no sense without recursion to its medieval origins. The dons of 13th century Oxford and Cambridge realised that having students scattered across town in unsupervised hostels was no stable foundation for the life academic. Yet since there was no physical campus to build on, new communities needed to be created from the ground up. When Walter de Merton drew up his own college statutes in 1264, he kept an eye on the most successful community-builders in contemporary Oxford — the Franciscans and Dominicans. However, he explicitly excluded members of religious orders from his foundation: he sought instead to create a self-perpetuating secular priesthood of scholars under the guidance of a master and fellows.
The collegium was a community with a shared mission — colleagues (collegae) who act together (con) on their commission (legare). In a gated sanctuary comprising hall, kitchen, chapel, library and rooms, these men lived together, studied together, dined together, prayed together and often died together. As self-governing institutions, supported financially by their benefactors’ endowments, colleges could pursue the intellectual life without external interference. Much like master craftsmen, scholars followed a seven-year plan, becoming Bachelors (examined after three years) then Masters (awarded after seven years) of Arts. Many moved on to careers in the church, medicine, law or teaching, whilst others were elected to the fellowship, taking holy orders (as typically required) and spending the rest of their lives within college walls.
Merton’s model was rapidly replicated across Oxford and Cambridge and remained fundamentally undisturbed for the next six centuries. By the 1870s, however, the pressures of societal change were too strong to be resisted. The Universities Test Act 1871 removed the requirement that fellows subscribe to the 39 Articles of Religion: the spiritual freedom — and lay fellows — this change ushered in inevitably eroded the religious unity of colleges, the observance of compulsory chapel and eventually any shared sense of Christian mission.
Later that decade, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act 1877 gave broad permission for fellows to marry. Since only the master had the privilege of living with wife and children inside college, the cities’ suburbs soon swelled with grand houses for fellows with growing families.
Despite the concurrent emergence of the first women-only colleges — Girton (1869) and Newnham (1871) in Cambridge; Lady Margaret Hall (1878), Somerville (1879), St Hugh’s (1886) and St Hilda’s (1893) in Oxford — it would take another century before women were admitted to male colleges.
Beginning first with fellows (Churchill 1970, Balliol 1973), and then undergraduates (Churchill, Clare, King’s 1972; Brasenose, Hertford, Jesus, St Catherine’s, Wadham 1974), the process was complete in two decades (St Benet’s in Oxford held out until 2016 but closed in 2022.)
Whilst these two great changes — the ability of fellows to marry and live elsewhere, and the admission of women to all parts of the community — necessarily ended the quasi-monastic character of colleges, the four major factors corroding collegiate fellowship are different, and more recent: decline in residence, decline in dining, rise in managerialism, rise in apathy.
✺
For most colleges it was a historic, statutory right for fellows to live alone in college free of charge, sustained by an allowance of meals, devoting themselves entirely to teaching and research. Looked after by a bedder or gyp, the archetypal bachelor don could be staggeringly productive academically. Just as importantly, despite the ever-rotating population of students, the small community of fellows — usually numbered in the teens, but living as one — gave stable continuance to the institution they stewarded.
Now scarcely three per cent of fellows are resident. The causes are multiple: fellows are elected at ever older ages, and are often already married with family; bursars keen to shake off this burdensome benefit fabricate hypothetical costs of what residential sets are “worth”, pressuring fellows to live outside college walls, or move out once retired; and ever-growing student numbers, including graduates who want the “proper” college experience, divide and conquer the old bachelor pads. Thus, outside office hours, the core company of the college — the fellowship — is almost entirely absent.
Except for when they are dining. Historically, the whole college would gather in hall for a shared meal, with the fellows slightly elevated on their wooden dais. That meal was originally around midday but drifted over the centuries through the afternoon into the evening. That shift allowed for multi-hour, multi-course, multi-person, multi-bottle discussion amongst fellows, first at High Table and then in the SCR (Senior Combination — or at Oxford, Common — Room).
The long-evolved customs of this setting are designed to foster conversation: guests flank the presiding fellow, all diners sit side by side without spaces, and the table’s proportions bring five others within conversational reach.
The apparent formalities — Latin grace, gowns, silver service — act as a fixed liturgy so that nothing other than conversation needs thinking about. The general prohibition on undergraduates and spouses, on politics and talking shop, sets the ground for unfettered interdisciplinary discussion. Where else, in the world, is better suited for that?
Yet with so few resident fellows, and with most facing their own appreciable demands at home — homes far removed from college because of house prices — High Table has become in all but a few places a sparsely observed ritual. The same is true of various society gatherings — intellectual, musical, political, sporting — which historically forged extra-curricular bonds between fellows and students.
Many colleges have reduced dining to once a week. In turn, lunch has grown as the fellows’ primary meal. Before World War II this was often a mere snack taken privately, but the logistics of wartime rationing made a communal meal more practicable; it has since grown to be much the busier event in hall.
Yet this is fundamentally a working lunch, an informal buffet picked at by fellows, who arrive and leave at different times, variously pressed by commitments on either side; many scientists, medics and engineers don’t even have time to return to college. It is no space for long-form conversation or, given the proximity of students, more sensitive subjects.
✺
Unsurprisingly, the scourge of lanyardism has spread through all sectors of college life. Fellows who used to control the estate that was their home are now treated as fungible employees by the managerial class. The sad and sombre state of most SCRs — where alcohol, tobacco, games, betting books and other signs of fellows at play have largely vanished — is a reflection of what “modernisation” looks like. You certainly hear a lot less laughter there.
Encroachment from outside college is greater than ever, especially since the Charities Act 2006. Once Oxbridge colleges fell under the Charity Commission’s ambit, and fellows were reframed as “trustees”, the gate swung wide open for officious meddling. Historic payments in kind, or other benefits of fellowship life that no one would invent in the 21st century, are pared back, taxed or culled, with bursars only too happy to use these guidelines as cover for their own cost-cutting measures.
More materially, the Charity Commission now seeks to “strengthen governance” in Oxford colleges by imposing a model more common at Cambridge — the council. This body, of a dozen fellows or so, meets more regularly to scrutinise college business, making recommendations to Governing Body.
What might in theory provide better governance in practice causes many fellows to disengage, which leaves Governing Body — though protected by statute as the sovereign body — as a mere rubber-stamping shop. Competent heads of house can bring all fellows into the discussion, but those are few and far between; many fellows instead see how “corporate” decisions are stitched up in their name, and lapse into apathy.
Covid catalysed this demise. Many colleges have foolishly continued to allow remote attendance at Governing Body meetings: several fellows spend the entire meeting on their screens tackling departmental work they are hard-pressed to finish; they are now never seen in person. Consequently, the one occasion when the fellowship had to gather around one table — often before or after a shared meal — is replaced by an empty simulacrum of that momentous assembly.
✺
Whilst the system in Oxford guarantees that all university academics have a relationship with a college, in Cambridge a growing proportion of academics choose not to combine their university post with any fellowship. They either see it as more hassle than it’s worth — low pay combined with high responsibility — or have no notion of its profound value, something inexpressible in numbers or simple sentences. The peculiar perks of a thriving fellowship were what made the relatively low salaries of Oxbridge tolerable; remove them, offering nothing in return, and the picture fades to grey.
Yet despite this decline in fellowship, the number of fellows expands in all directions. Whilst growth is often good, if unmanaged it inevitably dilutes the core character of a fellowship. A bewildering array of categories exists — professorial fellows, tutorial fellows, junior and senior research fellows, bye-fellows, fellow commoners, supernumerary fellows, honorary fellows, fellow benefactors and increasingly bemused emeritus fellows — and in many colleges that amalgam exceeds a hundred.
Lost in all this noise is the crucial need to find fellows who will give their lives to securing the college’s stability for generations to come.
In previous centuries, electing promising young fellows to research positions, and giving them some years to make a name for themselves, would give them a path to serve as worthy and committed fellows until their dying days. Nowadays, most research fellows are chosen from a global pool; that may mean they are the “world’s best”, but it also makes them more likely to leave the college after a few years in post.
Many find that their research is more hampered than helped by the increased expectations of teaching and administration that colleges impose on them. With few new entrants who comprehend what makes a healthy fellowship, or recognise the monastic vestiges of the hoods they wear twice a year, the fellowship drifts further from its founding ethos.
All the while, a growing portion of Oxbridge academics feel compelled by their elite surroundings to cosplay as activists, wishing to remove anything that could be thought privileged. Should the High Table really be higher? Should fellows be served different food? Must junior fellows really show occasional deference? Should portraits of pre-progressive men adorn the walls — and where are all the women? Do gowns serve any purpose? Wouldn’t a secular, English grace be more inclusive? These cranks are not just embedded within college walls; their votes are reverently counted.
A case in point is the Feast or Gaudy — a knees-up dinner for the fellowship, usually around the end of term, which is of greater scale than normal High Table. These splendid nights look indulgent and expensive, because they are. But this is not a pointless show of decadence; it is one of the few points in the year when the full fellowship, exhausted after another whirlwind term, spends long hours in merry, communal conversation.
It is the very pleasures of that company which make these events sing for their supper. To defend their value in purely monetary terms is difficult; to argue for their restoration once suspended or removed is quite impossible. The process of college “improvement” advances only in one direction.
✺
The three years I spent as a research fellow at Christ’s College Cambridge were amongst the happiest of my life. As an undergraduate there, I realised that Classics might offer more fulfilling challenges than journalism. Elected into the fellowship at 21, unencumbered by the world, I was able to enjoy residential life to the full, mixing research and teaching with escapades emanating from High Table — climbing buildings, night-swimming, stargazing, drinking and debating anything and everything through to dawn. And unending spells of laughter.
One night, moving to a college poker table, I had the windfall of meeting my wife. Souvent me souvient, as the motto of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the foundress of Christ’s, has it. Thereafter, despite many dear colleagues and wonderful students, my 12 years as a Fellow of Queens’ inform much of what I say here.
So what can be done to salvage the communal spirit of fellowship in those colleges that still care? Draw clear lines around the fellows proper. Elect young fellows who are willing and able to live in college. Do all you can to make regular dining feasible and appealing, to old and young. Help the senior fellows induct the junior fellows into the particular customs of the college.
Foster fellowship as you would a friendship. Remember that leisure and fun do not obstruct “work”. Take tradition seriously, trust in the wisdom of your predecessors, and entrust college offices not to ideologues but to those who believe in the life of discipline and dreaming and desire.
Most importantly of all — and this cannot be said more urgently — act now, or not at all.
