Features

Sixteen photographs by leading contemporary artists will be sold at a Sotheby's auction next month in support of the Bodleian Libraries' campaign to save the personal archive of William Henry Fox Talbot.

The campaign is a truly international effort, with the images being donated by major figures in contemporary photography from around the world, including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Miles Aldridge and John Swannell, Nadav Kander, Candida Höfer, Massimo Vitali, and Martin Parr.

Through this gesture, the artists are paying homage to Fox Talbot, the father of photography on paper and the art of which they are exponents.

For the auction, which will take place on 7 May, Sugimoto has donated two works, neither of which has previously been released into the market and both of which have been directly inspired by the Talbot archive. Also on sale will be Martin Parr's print taken at Lacock Abbey on the 150th anniversary of Talbot's invention in 1989.

Martin Parr's Lacock Abbey print will be one of the images on sale.

Credit: Martin Parr (Image reproduced by kind permission of Sotheby's)

'We are enormously grateful to the contemporary photographers who have devoted their energy and talent in producing the works which are offered in this auction. We warmly encourage bids: acquire a great photograph and help save a major archive, all at the same time.'

The Bodleian's appeal was launched in December 2012 with an initial deadline of the end of February 2013 to raise the £2.2 million pounds needed for purchasing the archive.

A significant grant of £1.2 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund gave the appeal a vital boost. And with the addition of a recent gift from the Art Fund of £200,000, along with donations from numerous other private individuals and charitable trusts, the Bodleian has managed to secure almost £1.9 million towards the purchase of the archive.

The Bodleian has successfully negotiated an extension to the fundraising deadline and must raise the remaining £375,000 needed to fully fund the acquisition by August 2014.

Private Thomas Highgate was just 17 when he became the first British soldier to be executed for desertion during the First World War.

Unable to cope with the horror and carnage of the Battle of Mons, he fled to northern France, where he was discovered hiding in a barn. He was tried, convicted and executed the following day.

Private Highgate was one of more than 300 soldiers executed by the British and Commonwealth military command during the course of the war.

Now, to mark the centenary of the conflict, award-winning photographer and Ruskin School of Art graduate Chloe Dewe Mathews will present a series of images focusing on the sites of these executions.

Titled Shot at Dawn, the project was commissioned by the Ruskin as part of 14-18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, the official cultural programme for the First World War centenary commemorations.

Chloe's series documents the locations at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion during the First World War. Her photographs were taken as close as possible to the precise time the executions took place, which was usually at daybreak. Drawing on meticulous research, she has been able to locate the exact sites at which scores of soldiers found guilty of breaching military discipline were executed by firing squad.

Chloe told BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme: 'Part of what was so fascinating about the process was working with a real broad range of people – academics, local historians, people who have dedicated 20 years of their lives to researching these stories.

'So I collated all that information and research and then spent the next year and a half going on a number of visits to Flanders and France to find these locations. I stayed in hotels and got up very early in the morning, in the darkness, to make my way to these places, setting up my tripod and waiting for the dawn, for the light to rise. That was the moment when I'd take the photograph.'

Chloe, who described the commission as 'challenging', visited 23 sites in total, ranging from fields and slag heaps to former abattoirs.

Paul Bonaventura, senior research fellow in fine art studies at the Ruskin, said: 'Chloe's commitment and dedication to Shot at Dawn, which has been more than two years in the making, has been nothing short of remarkable. It is a privilege for the Ruskin School of Art to have collaborated with such a talented photographer on such a uniquely special undertaking.'

The photographs will be launched in book form at Flanders House in London on 14 July before embarking on a two-year international exhibition tour including Tate Modern, Stills: Scotland's Centre for Photography, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

These drugs were handed out via a phoneline during the swine flu pandemic of 2009 as part of a wider public health strategy.

Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford University's Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and colleagues in the independent Cochrane Collaboration are clear that the money was wasted. They argue that the decision to stockpile the drugs might have been different had we had access to all the clinical data on their effectiveness.

Now we do have that evidence, and Carl says: 'There is no credible way these drugs could prevent a pandemic.' Speaking at a media briefing at the Science Media Centre in London, he said the money spent on stockpiling had been 'thrown down the drain'.

Since 2009, the Cochrane researchers have had a long running battle with the drug firms that manufacture Tamiflu and Relenza (Roche and GSK, respectively) to get unconditional access to their full data. They finally received everything last year, after first GSK then Roche said they would provide the materials – a significant development in the campaign to increase openness and accessibility of complete trial data.

The Cochrane group has been significant players, along with the AllTrials campaign, the BMJ medical journal, Ben Goldacre and others, in changing the whole approach to this issue among researchers, journals, drug firms and regulators. The simple argument is that if we are to make the right decision on what are the best drugs – considering their safety, effectiveness and the balance of benefits they offer in treating conditions over their side-effects – we need to have all the evidence available.

The researchers have now made that assessment for Tamiflu in the prevention and treatment of flu. They have reviewed a phenomenal amount of material, and with the BMJ and the Cochrane Collaboration, have published their conclusions today. They call on government and health policy decision makers to review guidance on the use of Tamiflu in light of their new evidence.

They found that Tamiflu is effective – but it shortens symptoms of flu by only around half a day on average. And importantly, they say, there is no good evidence to support claims that it reduces complications of influenza or admissions to hospital.

Then there are the side effects. Using Tamiflu to treat flu, the evidence confirms an increased risk of suffering from nausea and vomiting.

When Tamiflu is used to prevent flu, the drug can reduce the risk of people suffering symptomatic influenza. But there was an increased risk of headaches, psychiatric disturbances, and kidney events.

The review authors, Drs Tom Jefferson, Carl Heneghan and Peter Doshi, conclude that there are insufficient grounds to support the stockpiling of Tamiflu for mass use in a pandemic. From the best conducted randomised trials, there just isn’t enough evidence on the crucial elements of reducing serious complications of flu that can lead to hospitalisation and death, and the prevention of spread of flu. On the other hand we know there would be side-effects.

Not all scientists agree on the assessment of the balance of benefits of these antivirals versus their side-effects. Virologist Professor Wendy Barclay at Imperial College London believes the shorter time that symptoms last is important: 'Although one day does not sound like a lot, in a disease that lasts only 6 days, it is…We have only two drugs with which we can currently treat influenza patients and there is some data to suggest they can save lives. It would be awful if, in trying to make a point about the way clinical trials are conducted and reported, the review ended up discouraging doctors from using the only effective anti-influenza drugs we currently have.'

Roche, the manufacturers of Tamiflu, fundamentally disagree with the overall conclusions of the Cochrane review and criticised some of the report’s methodology. In media reports, UK Medical Director Dr Daniel Thurley has said: 'Roche stands behind the wealth of data for Tamiflu and the decisions of public health agencies worldwide, including the US and European Centres for Disease Control & Prevention and the World Health Organisation.'

Indeed, Roche have pointed to a large observational trial in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine that they funded which recently reported a reduction in deaths among those hospitalised with swine flu H1N1, though there are some who disagree with that analysis too.

So what to make of all of this? An editorial in the Guardian concludes: 'The only way to resolve the argument is proper science. That means transforming clinical trials, harmonising the way they are carried out. It has happened with malaria drugs, and it is happening with HIV. The industry must allow access to their data. Confident that like is compared with like, trials can then be subjected to meta-analysis, allowing statisticians to drill down into sub-populations to establish when a drug performs most effectively.'

The editorial points to the need to be able to react swiftly and carry out good research actually during pandemics, as former Oxford University professor and now director of the Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, argued in the paper last month.

What has really changed is the ability to have these discussions based on all of the evidence. There is a real shift in the level of scrutiny and the analyses that are now possible with access to all clinical trial data (although dealing with all these reams of data also brings new challenges too). That is a phenomenal change and a real achievement by the Cochrane researchers.

David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, comments: 'This is a ground-breaking review. Since important studies have never been published, the reviewers have had to go back to clinical trial reports comprising over 100,000 pages: the effort to obtain these is a saga in itself. The poor quality of these reports clearly made extracting relevant data a massive struggle, with many pragmatic assumptions having to be made, but the final statistical methods are standard and have been used in hundreds of Cochrane reviews. Let’s hope that in future high-quality data can be routinely obtained and this type of review becomes unnecessary.'

It was one of the biggest protest movements ever seen in the UK.

For three decades, the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) campaigned for a boycott of apartheid South Africa and supported all those struggling against it.

Founded in 1959 as the Boycott Movement, the AAM grew into the biggest ever British pressure group on an international issue.

Now, 20 years after Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa's first black president, a collection of rare documents held by Oxford University's Bodleian Library has been uploaded to a new website chronicling the history of the AAM.

Lucy McCann, archivist at the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, said: 'The Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive at the Bodleian Library records the activities of one of the most important campaigning organisations in post-war Britain and this website makes available to all a wide selection of documents, posters, photographs, newly recorded interviews, videos and other items.

'It is of interest to those studying South Africa and British-South African relations over the period and the activities and effectiveness of campaigning organisations.'

The new website features three decades' worth of videos, photos, posters and documents relating to the AAM. Highlights include footage of the Nelson Mandela tribute concert at Wembley in 1988, iconic posters from campaigns to save those accused at the Rivonia Trial from the gallows in 1964 and to stop the Springbok cricket tour in 1970, and letters from Margaret Thatcher arguing against sanctions on South Africa.

There are also interviews with musician Jerry Dammers of The Specials, actor Louis Mahoney, David Steel (AAM President in the 1960s), and grassroots activists who talk about what motivated them to get involved and help bring down South Africa's system of white minority rule and racial segregation.

Ms McCann added: 'I think the archive is very important because for people at school now, all this happened before they were born.

'But it was a very big movement in Britain and some of the events they organised, such as the Nelson Mandela concert, were global events and were broadcast around the world.'

The website is part of a wider education project that includes a pop-up exhibition with 22 display boards on anti-apartheid campaigns and support groups.

The project is funded by the Barry Amiel & Norman Melburn Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Leading figures from the worlds of art, museums, film and historiography will visit Oxford next month in the latest series of Humanitas events.

World-renowned artist Vik Muniz will deliver a series of stimulating talks in his role as Humanitas Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art. Mr Muniz is a photographer who incorporates unusual materials into the photographic process. For his recent project Pictures of Garbage he created a series of monumental photographic portraits made from industrial rubbish in collaboration with the litter pickers of Jardim Gramacho, one of the largest landfill sites in Latin America.

Mr Muniz will be joined for a symposium titled 'Between the Artist and the Museum' by Michael Govan, Humanitas Visiting Professor in Museums, Galleries and Libraries. Mr Govan is CEO and Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and is responsible for turning it into Southern California's dominant cultural organisation.

Also visiting Oxford next term are filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and historiographer Professor Lynn Hunt.

Ms Reichardt, Humanitas Visiting Professor in Film and Television, will be giving a masterclass and taking part in an 'in conversation' event, while Humanitas will also be hosting special screenings of her films Meek's Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy.

Professor Hunt will deliver a series of lectures on 'Dilemmas of History in a Global Age', which will conclude with a roundtable discussion with Professor Lyndal Roper and Professor Elleke Boehmer.

Humanitas is a series of Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge intended to bring leading practitioners and scholars to both universities to address major themes in the arts, social sciences and humanities.

Created by Lord Weidenfeld, the programme is managed and funded by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue with the support of a series of generous benefactors and administered by the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).