A lot has happened in Oxford on 21 March over the years:
Colin Dexter, creator of the opera-, beer-, and jaguar-loving Inspector Morse, died on 21 March 2017, aged 87. There are no fewer than fifteen black-and-white photographs of his detective hero in the recently refurbished Morse Bar at the Randolph Hotel (one of Colin’s preferred drinkeries); and the Inspector’s portrait hangs over the fireplace.
Vivien Stanshall, founder of the gloriously eccentric Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, was born here on 21 March 1943. He can be spotted ‘playing’ the recorder and the, erm, garden hose, in I’m the Urban Spaceman, which reached No.5 in the UK pop charts (1968).
C.S. Lewis married Joy Gresham in a Christian ceremony at her bedside in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957, eleven months after their civil marriage at the Oxford register office (now a deluxe dentist – 42 St Giles’).
The very last cow was driven to the very last cattle market to be held at Oxpens on 21 March 1979.
The Weston Library (the dull monolith formerly known as the New Bodleian) was opened to readers, coffee-drinkers and exhibition-goers on 21 March 2015, following a widely acclaimed re-design by the architects, Wilkinson Eyre.
And it was on the 21 March 1556 that Oxford’s most celebrated victim, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, was burnt at the stake, hand-first, on a pyre erected in Broad Street. The story of his dramatic demise and that of the two other ‘Oxford Martyrs’ is told here: https://morrisoxford.co.uk/martyrs-cross/
Onward and Oxford. Happy Equinox!
