A specialist consultancy providing bespoke advice and creative solutions for complex cultural, ethical, and religious issues in contemporary geopolitics.
Oxford House Research publishes weekly briefing papers on topical and global issues authored by associates and a range of external contributors. Members receive these by email each week.
Pakistan is a wonderful, but vulnerable country. Internal politics, religious extremism, and ecological risk plague its life and its international profile. My focus here is on the crippling effects of the recent floods that brought havoc, heartache, and the loss of life to many inside and, I should stress, outside the country. For, Pakistan is […]
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I am delighted that my colleague at St Mary’s University, Dr Andrea Sau, has provided us with a Guest Briefing on ‘Ideology’, a special interest of his and of immediate relevance to us all. The eminent Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961) wrote many years ago, ‘Our blight is ideologies – they are the […]
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Human nature being what it is, in most countries and cultures crimes of all kinds abound. Though statistics over the last twenty years from the US and UK indicate a general decline in crime overall, such statistics are famously impacted by levels of reporting, policing and investment, and contradicted by the emergence of new types […]
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During the past few weeks, the world has witnessed two very different, but thankfully equally peaceful, transitions of power. In the young, vibrant East African country of Kenya and in the historic United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, power has, with the assent of the people, passed in an orderly fashion from one […]
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As my wife and I prepare for our summer break (this is the last Briefing until September), we have been looking back on the year. We both have elderly mothers, who make demands but remind us of ultimate realities. We have four fine grandchildren, who bring delight but intensify our concerns about the future. We […]
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Overshadowed internationally by the crisis in Ukraine, torn domestically between the Scylla of conflict over Taiwan and the Charybdis of ethnic regionalism in Xinjiang, and buffeted, as we saw in Part I, by waves of domestic discontent, Xi Jinping’s ‘New China’ faces the greatest challenges to its identity and coherence since its inception in 1949. […]
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I am one of a number of optimistic China-watchers who believed in its potential to be a force for good in the world. Alas, its failure to fulfil this expectation has become a modern tragedy. In retrospect, China’s current trajectory should come as no surprise. Despite reporting to the contrary, its breakneck economic growth concealed […]
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Like many Western societies, the UK prides itself on being tolerant. Fundamental British values are now widely promoted as democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, respect and tolerance. Not to be tolerant is to many, we are led to believe, to be narrow-minded, bigoted, exclusive, and potentially a lawbreaker. It is to be castigated […]
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In my last OH Briefing (‘Sport, glorious sport’, 15 January 2022), I alluded to the close relationship between sporting achievement and character, how mindset, discipline and will are the bedrock of greatness in champions. As a friend quoted to me the other day, ‘It’s discipline that turns a nobody into a somebody.’ I want to […]
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I am delighted Duncan Smith[1] responded positively to my request to write a Guest Briefing for Oxford House. The Briefing is a taster of his treatment of an important theme. Christopher Hancock (Director) Frauds and tricksters are common in fiction. From the Wizard of Oz to The Talented Mr Ripley fictional characters have portrayed the […]
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