SEAMUS PERRY on what the dons of Oxford do over the summer hols

The historian Sir Keith Thomas, to whom many of the best bon mots of modern Oxford are attributed, is supposed to have said that academic life had three things to recommend it — July, August, and September.

I am sure that the Thomas family hols were lovely, but what he had in mind was that those months gave the harassed don the chance finally to get into a library, to do some research and a bit of writing, before the burdens of term re-asserted themselves in the first days of October.

Dons have many odd turns of phrase: collecting them is an innocent hobby of mine.

One is the habit of referring to research as ‘doing my own work’ — as if the teaching and examining and all the rest that constitutes the main part of their professional life were properly someone else’s job, which nevertheless, for some inscrutable reason, they found themselves obliged to take on now and again.

In recent years the emphasis implied by this curious cast of mind has been encouraged by successive governments, first in the ‘Research Assessment Exercise’, and now the ‘Research Excellence Framework’, in which panels of distinguished professors award points to the academic publications produced over the previous few years.

One can take a lofty view of such things; but, as Sir Bruce Forsyth once wisely observed, points mean prizes — in this case, the judgment upon the work published by a university affects the amount of government money it receives, so there is more at stake here than the harmless pleasure of seeing your name in print.

And, after all, it is not unreasonable to expect academics to produce something now and again that someone else might want to read.

All of which makes mellow September, most lovely of Oxford’s months, a time of quiet desperation for your average don.

The fortnight in Norfolk is long over, remembered only by a fading wind-chaffed suntan and a persistent hole in the current account. The kids have returned to school. Nothing now stands between you and the chance to tick off the ‘to do’ list that you scribbled on an old Oxford Gazette back in early July, during a boring bit of the final examiners’ meeting, and which has remained stubbornly unticked ever since.

It is a time for honest and sober reflection. Looks like that landmark book about gardens from Basho to Betjeman is going to have to be put on hold again (better send a charming email to the publisher); but with a good wind the long-promised essay on jokes in Iris Murdoch should be do-able (Mem: must read The Bell).

As Michaelmas term nears, creative energies are turned to more pressing matters: how best to respond when, in a few short days’ time, you are greeted cheerfully in the quad.

“Successful vacation? I spent three months in the Folger — marvellously productive! You?”

“Oh, hello Larry — well, this and that. Yes, always good to do your own work for a change, isn’t it?”