On a grey day, the campus of the University of Warwick has the appearance of a benign North Korea. It’s something to do with the too-wide communal spaces, the huge institutional buildings and the heavy sky. Christopher Tang, who is studying English literature and creative writing, shows me around the university’s arts centre. A cinema, a concert hall, a crowd of frantic students printing off essays from the communal printers. The inexpert janglings of Warwick’s amateur pianists emanate from the practice rooms upstairs.
University artistic life seems to be proceding as normal, but there are shadows of unease. Tang is the author of a lucid essay for the student newspaper, The Tab, which lamented the rise of a science-worshipping campus environment in which “English literature
