As many of you will be aware I am somewhat dreadful at posting some of the excellent material that you send me. I received this from Nicholas whom I met at a Stanfords book event a few months ago. Like many things it fell down the list of things to do. Events have clearly overtaken this piece, his diary entry from 15 June 2023 written in Ukraine, but perhaps publishing it on its first anniversary will offer a fresh perspective.

I am walking through Staryi Rynok Square in Lviv, Ukraine. There is a ghostly howl from the
clock tower that grows in volume. People carry on enjoying the last of the sun on a warm
June evening as though nothing is happening, but it is actually the air raid siren, and my
iPhone is vibrating with its own warning of incoming missiles. I know that very few missiles
get through the Ukrainian defences these days, but it is an excuse to go into a network of
cellars that provide both protection from drones and missiles, and a bar. It is not just a bar,
but a museum celebrating the activities of the Ukrainian partisans in the second world war –
a time of defiance, resilience and resistance in the face of first the Nazi invasion and then
the Soviet occupation. The walls are lined with wood as though one is in a trench,
photographs of partisans hang in frames. Maps, radios and weapons are on display. It’s a
world as strange as anything Lewis Carroll or rather Charles Dodgson described.

What am I doing here? I reflect on this as I raise a glass of vodka to celebrate the arrival of
two friends from university, a Classicist and a Fellow who taught English and French
literature. Exotic subjects for one who studied biochemistry and spent many hours in a
white lab coat with agar plates and time-consuming experiments separating out proteins in
gel tubes using a technique known as electrophoresis.

Now the talk is of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, of the future of warfare, the unlearnt
lessons of two world wars and human rights. We had all driven out across Europe passing
the poppy fields of the Somme, through the Ruhr valley and passed the names associated
with massacres and concentration camps….. Katowice… Auschwitz. Places that led to two
new crimes – genocide and ‘crimes against humanity’. The lawyers who penned those new
concepts, Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht lived and studied in this very city. Together
they shaped the indictment at the Nuremberg trials and created concepts, captured some of
the worst depravity of the twentieth century; and transformed international law and human
rights.

The origins of this mission go back to a Gaudy. It was after midnight in the Buttery in the
Spring of 2021 when I heard two classicists talking of Patrick Leigh Fermor (PLF). One I knew,
the other I knew of, and I joined the conversation. I realised we were in PLF’s words
‘Drinking from the same fountain’. This of course is the essence of college life, unbounded
by what one studies and the opportunity to make acquaintances that transcend year groups
and even Common Rooms. Ideas and enthusiasms can be pooled, and encouragement and
support can be liberally shared. Without that conversation, there would have been no
mission to Ukraine.

PLF’s love of classics had taken him to Greece where he had spent much of the second
world war living with the partisans in the mountains of Crete. A love of literature and
languages made PLF the kind of traveller who immersed himself in local cultures and
experiences. His book ‘A Time of Gifts’ has inspired generations since to do likewise. He also
had a sense of history, and his writings seem to resonate today when the pages of European
history are turning over so fast, and we all wonder what will be the theme of the next
chapter that it is leading to. In my twenties I had found myself sharing a cave with a
Hungarian surgeon and Arabist in Central Afghanistan, with a clandestine medical mission run by a mujahideen commander. Later when I read stories of PLF in the Cretan mountains,it conjured up those times.

Now Ukraine feels like the crucible in which that new history is being forged at an alarming
rate, reshaping our expectations for us, a new generation that might have considered
themselves beneficiaries of Europe’s rich heritage and the world. Changing patterns of trade
and dissolving hopes for any global alliance against climate change. For people in the
theatre itself represents both an existential crisis as well as a continuum of seven hundred
years of war between the Muscovites and the Kyivs.

Perhaps that is why Ukraine has attracted so many people to it, each on a mission of their
own making. I was there providing arms (prosthetics) for the wounded, my Christ Church
contemporaries were bringing trucks, drones and tourniquets for the front line and for
security reasons must remain anonymous.

Air raid over, we made up way up from the labyrinthian cellar and came out blinking in the
sunlight to make our way to Baczewski Restaurant. We remembered PLF, and reflected that
if he was going out to dinner in Lviv he would undoubtedly have recommended this
restaurant with its fine dining, vodka distillery and sense of history.

15 th June 2023