| Method | Letterpress |
| Artist | [Anonymous] |
| Published | Bryan, Printer, Oxford. Friday, February 29, 1924. |
| Dimensions | Sheet 170 x 250 mm |
| Notes |
The menu card for the Centenary Banquet of the Oxford Union Society, featuring numerous signatures of Union officers, speakers, and givers of toasts. The front of the programme, blazoned with the Arms of the Society, features as a motto for the evening a variation on the epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren in St Pauls: Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice - if you seek a monument, look around. Inside the programme is a nine course menu and drinks list, as well as the names of those to propose and respond to toasts to the King, to the University, to the Church, to the House of Lords, to the House of Commons, to the Law, to Letters, to the Union, and to the Ex-Officers of the Union. The banquet and centenary debate were originally scheduled for October 1923, but due to the general election and the inevitable loss of attendance which would have followed, festivities were postponed until February of 1924. The debate, held on the previous evening, passed the motion that 'This House believes that civilisation has advanced since this House met.' On the cover, front and back, are numerous signatures, amongst which are legible Sir John Simon, Home Secretary under Asquith, George Curzon of Kedleston, former Viceroy of India and Chancellor of the University, Lord Robert Cecil, diplomat, lawyer, and later architect of the League of Nations and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Cosmo Gordon Lang, Anglo-Catholic theologian and Archbishop of York and later Canterbury, William Temple, socialist theologian and educator and the successor to Lang as Archbishop of both York and Canterbury, H.H. Asquith the former Prime Minister, Birkenhead the former Lord High Chancellor and personal friend of Churchill, Hilaire Belloc, writer, poet, and wit, Anthony Hope, novelist and playwright, and Christopher Henry Oldham Scaife, poet, translator, and President at the time of issue. Condition: Central vertical folds, as issued. Minor uniform time toning. |
| Framing | unmounted |
| Price | £300.00 |
| Stock ID | 52611 |