Joseph Farrell

In all the spleen and outrage expended over the Cummings affair, one aspect has been overlooked – the probably irreparable damage done to the reputation and image of the fair city of Durham. Cummings may be unscathed and unscatheable, but the reputation of a city is a more delicate organism. Will Durham ever recover?

A city's reputation evolves over time, for better or worse. Aberdeen in Scotland or Genoa in Italy have become identified as the residence of people of unusual parsimony or downright meanness. The Scotland the What team developed a routine about an Aberdonian greeting - you'll have had your tea! This reputation has long been felt as an injustice by Aberdonians and Genoese, but there we have it.

Are cats, or people, in Kilkenny any more ferocious than the feline or human species in other parts of Ireland or indeed Europe, but people having a disagreement are described as 'fighting like Kilkenny cats.' Unfair, but visitors walk fearfully about, wary of the combatants of Kilkenny, of whatever nature.

Cities are glad to struggle for some ebullient title, like 'city of love.' Paris is the long-term holder, although Rome has tried to rival it. Glasgow made a rather pathetic entry into the field a couple of years ago on the grounds that the bones of St Valentine are enclosed in a box in a Franciscan church in the Gorbals. Maybe they are, but a title like that cannot be conferred by officialdom, and Glasgow's effort was a bit implausible.

The fate of having an other wise irreproachable history tarnished not by Act of God or some misdeed perpetrated by any of its citizens but by malign force majeure has been visited on some places, such as Coventry, home of three universities and of a magnificent modern cathedral designed by Basil Spence. It has been selected as 2021 City of Culture, but is tussling with the implications of being 'sent to Coventry,' that is, in plain English, of being ostracised, shunned, treated as a leper among fellow humans. I do not say that this image is just or merited, only that it is so.

So let us speak up for Durham before it is too late. Perhaps this new reputation as a place of refuge is itself a consequence of its compassionate history. Durham was in the Middle Ages a place of sanctuary and the bell in the cathedral which fugitives could ring to seek temporary refuge before self-isolating abroad can still be seen. Perhaps, although overlooked by Emily Maitlis and his other critics, a memory of that status is the real reason why in our own times the sightless fugitive, Dominic Cummings, undertook his legendary flight to Durham, and not elsewhere.

I have been to Durham a couple of times and was once lodged in the old bishop's castle as guest of the university. Indeed I have slept in the bishop's four-poster bed – when the bishop was happily absent. I can attest that Durham merits the fame it has so far enjoyed based solely on the beauty of the city itself, embellished by the most glorious of all England's cathedrals, and on the friendliness of its citizens, as honest and as peace-loving as any in Europe. Visitors were once drawn to enjoy the prospect of a walk along the River Wear, and a drink in its local pubs. All such fame gone, dispersed, vanished beyond recall! Durham has had other associations arbitrarily and cruelly cast upon it.

Whatever his motives, the name Cummings can be added in local opprobrium to those of Cromwell or forgotten Scots invaders who once caused havoc in the streets of Durham. The city suffered in the Middle Ages from outbreaks of the plague, as it now suffers from the side effects of the virus which sent Cummings there. The Cummings' damage may be more lasting and may give a new phrase to the language. To announce that you are going to Durham will in the future be similar in infamy to being sent to Coventry.

A journey to Durham will be interpreted as an attempt to escape those humdrum conditions which apply to the common run of humankind. Anyone taking up residence in Durham will be seen as a sniffy individual, dismissive of common law, and who, if s/he wishes others to move on, is wishing them not 'bon voyage,' but 'mind your own bloody business, serf!' Alas poor Durham!

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