Source: Alamy

Buffet zone: from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, cocktail sausages

¡°Every new generation must rewrite history in its own way,¡± wrote the philosopher R.G. Collingwood. But the surreal historical revisions revealed in Times ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø¡¯s annual ¡°exam howlers¡± competition are probably not what the esteemed University of Oxford don had in mind.

Submitted from the thousands of examination scripts marked this summer, this year¡¯s bumper crop of comical cock-ups provide some unusual takes on world events.

¡°In 1945 Stalin began to build a buffet zone in Eastern Europe,¡± wrote one second-year student in a module on the Cold War.

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¡°[It] conjures an image of Uncle Joe constructing a trestle-table ¡®curtain¡¯ from the Baltic to the Adriatic to keep the rapacious capitalists at bay with canapes, sausage rolls and cocktail sausages,¡± said Kevin Ruane, professor of modern history at Canterbury Christ Church University, who submitted the entry.

Medievalist David Ganz, emeritus professor in palaeography at King¡¯s College London, was amused by one student¡¯s insistence that in the Middle Ages ¡°most books were written on valium¡± rather than vellum.

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Meanwhile, John Fisher, emeritus professor of Latin American history at the University of Liverpool, was surprised to read that ¡°Spain was a very Catholic country, since Christianity had been taken there in the third century BC¡±.

A second howler submitted by Professor Fisher showed one student preferring to err on the side of caution when it came to the past.

¡°In 1493 Pope Paul V, himself a Catholic, authorised Spain to convert the American Indians,¡± the student reported.

Spelling errors again proved a rich source of amusement.

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Paul Allain, professor of theatre and performance at the University of Kent, enjoyed one student¡¯s essay on Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski and his ¡°laboratory theatre¡±, which required a physically demanding style of acting. The student wrote about actor Ryszard Cieslak ¡°straining at their role in the lavatory theatre¡±.

Sometimes context is key. Writing in an exam on the biology of sperm, one student described the 18th-century Italian naturalist Lazzaro Spallanzani as a ¡°priest cum scientist¡±, according to David Hosken, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Exeter.

And academic referencing was taken to a new level in an entry from Bella Millett, professor of English at the University of Southampton, who told how a student introduced a quotation from a secondary source with: ¡°As Ibid says¡±.

Matthew Hudson, course leader in wine business at Plumpton College in Sussex, submitted numerous student clangers, but one stood out: ¡°The 4 Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place, Distribution¡±.

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The winner will be announced in next week¡¯s THE.

jack.grove@tsleducation.com