Alumni Profile – Alex Norman (2005-2009)

Following the recent launch of his new biography of the Dalai Lama at Blackfriars, we caught up with alumnus Alexander Norman and asked him about his fascinating life and his time studying with us.

How did you come to study at Blackfriars, Oxford?

I suppose it could be said to have begun with the Dalai Lama, whom I first met when I went to interview him for The Spectator back in the late eighties. Having been given the privilege – through one of those completely unforeseeable flukes that occasionally come one’s way in life – of ghost-writing his autobiography, I had by now begun work with the Dalai Lama on a book designed to articulate his ethics for a general readership.

Subsequently, at a conference of the Mind and Life Institute, which took place in India during the late nineties and which the Dalai Lama attended, I was fortunate enough to meet Charles Taylor, who had until recently been Chichele Professor of Philosophy at All Souls College, University of Oxford. During our conversations, Charles told me about the work of the World Community for Christian Meditation, of which he was a member and which I joined on his recommendation. He also agreed to be in touch when next over in England and, as good as his word, contacted me, as I recall, a couple of years later and invited me to join him at another conference, this time in Oxford and organised by the Radical Orthodoxy group. Intrigued, I accepted the invitation at once.

The conference itself I found stimulating, but also frustrating. There was a lot of talk about books and writers I had never come across and I realised that, if I was to make sense of what was being said, I needed to learn something about Theology as a discipline. I read the founding text of the movement, eponymously named Radical Orthodoxy, which intrigued and perplexed me in equal measure. I decided that I really wanted to get to grips with the ideas presented, partly for their own sake and partly because my work with the Dalai Lama had made me conscious of the vast gaps in my own education. It was hopeless, I felt, exploring another culture without being at least reasonably well versed in one’s own.

I had not long left the army and, although always an avid reader, had never had any tertiary education apart from that which I received at the Royal Academy in Sandhurst and which was rather more focussed on bringing other peoples’ lives to an end than it was on what might follow both for those others and myself! It occurred to me that either I should send myself on a prolonged period of self-study, or – how about this for an idea? – take myself back to school.

Charles Taylor had introduced me to Fr Fergus Kerr OP, then Regent of Blackfriars, and it occurred to me that I should write to him for advice. By then, however, Fr Fergus had moved on and Fr Richard Finn OP was at the helm. He invited me over and told me that a good place to start would be with some courses in the Studium. Learning that Philosophy – in which I had also become interested – was also taught at Blackfriars, I immediately signed up fo Fr Rudolf Löwenstein’s logic course as well as the course on Platonism by Fr Vivian Boland OP. Besides these, I attended Fr Richard’s course on Augustine and two lecture series given by Stephen Priest.

Tell us about your time at Blackfriars: What did you study?

After taking these courses in the Studium, and after putting myself forward for the Logic exam and a viva, I was invited to apply for the BA in Philosophy and Theology. As a matter of fact, having been interviewed by a panel consisting of the Regent, Fr Denis Minns OP and Stephen Priest (and asked all sorts of questions I had no idea how to answer), I was offered a place but deferred for a year in order to finish a book (a history of the Dalai Lama institution).

How did you benefit?

To study under the supervision of some of the finest minds in the country, if not the world, as one does at Oxford, cannot fail to have a positive impact on the quality and range of one’s thought, and on the way that one organises and presents that thought. As Stephen Priest often says ‘learning about philosophy will cause you to think thoughts you have not had before’. In my own case, all the above is true and I am quite certain that I write far more clearly and imaginatively, and with much greater rigour, than ever I did before.

What are your fondest memories?

One moment I shall never forget was the first time I attended a lecture given by Stephen Priest. With his shirt-sleeves rolled up and pacing the room with ferocious intent, he looked more like a prize-fighter than a philosopher. And what he spoke about struck me as utterly urgent and important. It was a revelation.

Another never-to-be-forgotten moment was my first meeting with Michael Inwood, then Deputy Master of Trinity, who was my tutor for the Ancient Philosophy paper. One day I must write a proper description of the absolutely disastrous state of Michael’s room where, evidently some years before, he had put one too many books on the pile on the table which stood in the centre of his room. A majority of them had cascaded onto the floor: a kind of terminal solution to a sorites problem which had yet to be written up and so remained awaiting the day – which perhaps did not come until it became someone else’s room – when the experiment would be deemed a success and the evidence filed neatly away.  

Other fond memories include visits to the Lamb and Flag with Stephen Priest and other students (mainly American visitors) on a Friday evening; meals with the community; strawberries and Pimms in the Fellows’ garden; hours spent chasing up references in the library; and one terrible moment when my telephone went off while my Director of Studies, Fr Denis, was preaching at Mass! Nor shall I ever forget two tutorials with the late Professor Sir Roger Scruton.

During the week that I sat my Finals, the Dalai Lama came to Blackfriars. From memory, this was the very day I sat the Aquinas paper for which I was fortunate enough to be awarded the Duns Scotus prize for Mediaeval Philosophy. Although I was horribly distracted, having been the cause of the Dalai Lama’s invitation to Oxford in the first place, and from having to accompany him throughout most of the day, it seems that, from a Buddhist point of view, I acquired some good karma from the occasion!

Have you kept in touch with fellow alumni?

I certainly have, notably with Benedikt Goecke who arrived during my final year. I have also enjoyed a personal friendship with Stephen Priest who, in turn, introduced me to a number of his other students including Ralph Weir and Mikolaj Slawowski-Rode with whom I also remain in close contact. It is even rumoured that we have formed a sodality known occasionally to meet in different hostelries both in Oxford and abroad (where ‘abroad’ includes far abroad) that goes by the name of the Drinklings…

What have you been doing since your graduation?

Since graduating, I have published three books. The latest is a biography of the Dalai Lama. Also, in 2014, I set up a charity based here in Oxford called the Dalai Lama Centre for Compassion (it was seed-funded by him): this began life as a research centre but is now focussed on creating a compassion- and character-development course for primary-school children. Called Compassion Matters, the course, which proposes compassion as the ‘master virtue’, is based on a Natural Law ethics and – so it would seem – manages both to be accessible to young children and to be some of the most robust classroom material I have seen. I’m pleased to say that we (which includes both myself and Ralph Weir with further help from Mikolaj Slawowski-Rode and Samuel Hughes) are having tremendous success with it.

Thank you, Alex, for sharing your story with us.
If you are a Blackfriars alumnus and would like to share news about what you are doing now, please get in touch.