Regent’s Park College must number among the poorest of the Oxford colleges. Tucked away on the northeast side of the central portion of the city, it is unlikely that many passers-by identify it without a marked map in hand. Its plain facade has no grand portal and only the most obscure of signage, with a small college shield, near the entrance to name it. The small interior quad has some plain and very modest efforts at a garden. The hall of course features the ubiquitous Oxfordian high table, but the space itself is marked by a conspicuous penury, a testament to the constraints and marginal status of the nonconformist Baptists that sponsor the college, perhaps. The ceiling is wood-paneled, but with a stained plywood, so it appears, rather than with a richer hardwood as might be found in other college halls. My own quarters, in room ten on the second floor of the north wing, are those occupied by students of the college in term, and they are Spartan by any standard, though certainly adequate for my needs. For all of its lack of architectural fanfare, it can claim among its heroes such noteworthy Baptists as Thomas Helwys, for whom the great hall is named, and William Carey, whose name is found alongside Helwys’.
Yesterday offered an occasion for bookshopping, first at Jericho Books a few blocks away, by myself, and then later at St. Stephen’s across from Christ Church with Barry Harvey, Mark Medley (Campbellsville, KY), and Kyle Childress (Nacodoches, TX). At Jericho I purchased Burnett’s Early Greek Philosophy and Merton’s Waters of Silence. At St. Stephen’s I purchased a couple of volumes about Newman and the Tractarians.
There’s more to write, but Scott Moore has arrived from a conference in Dresden; he will be here, in RPC, for the rest of the week’s seminar.
