The Use and Abuse of the English Commons, 1845–1914

Some of you here know how I met Raphael Samuel in whose memory these lectures are held, but for those who do not I will repeat it because it has significance for the lecture that follows - it also a good story. I met Raphael in November 1968 in the austere canteen at Ruskin Hall in Headington where he taught history and sociology and I was a new student. I was drawn to the table not by him but the luminous attractions of my fellow student Sally Alexander. Raph spoke first. - What are you studying comrade? - Economics. (Long pause) - But comrade economics is the property of the class enemy. (Another pause) - Where are you from? - Bicester. - Bicester is a most extraordinarily interesting place ... . He was wrong about Bicester, but subsequent conversations led me to be- lieve that I should be studying history - and Raphael's kind of history at that. This meant initially joining in the end of a collective research project on the village of Headington Quarry in my native Oxfordshire. Raphael wrote of this in 1974 as 'a project we had at Ruskin about four years ago, as an

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