D is for Dodo
Was it because he had a stammer that Charles Lutwidge Do-Do-Do-Dodgson – aka Lewis Carroll – became fascinated by the Dodo? Or was it perhaps his penchant for alliteration and the idea of being ‘Dead as a Dodo’? The last Dodo ... CONTINUE READING
Bartlemas 900
One summer’s evening, while quietly tending the plants on his allotment, Martin Stott thought he heard a choir of angels. Putting aside his spade, he leant over the boundary hedge. Sure enough: wafting towards him on the warm breeze were the strains ... CONTINUE READING
Oxford Lives
There are a LOT of interesting characters on this overcrowded island of ours; and if you’d been in the Rose & Crown last Friday night you could be forgiven for thinking that most of them live in Oxford. Entertaining, erudite, eccentric, ... CONTINUE READING
Plaque over Plaque
'We’ve barely arrived in Oxford. We're still just a few yards outside the railway station, and already we’re standing on a piece of land that has been an abbey, a station, and a business school … Every square metre of Oxford ... CONTINUE READING
Ox May
The sculptor Michael Black (1928-2019) is best known for carving the giant ‘Emperors’ heads which stare out across Broad Street from in front of the Sheldonian Theatre. He did many other fine sculptures too – in a variety of materials: wood, ... CONTINUE READING
Bungee
On April Fools’ Day 1979 a young man, dressed in top hat and tails and clutching a bottle of Bollinger, hurled himself off Clifton suspension bridge and plummeted over 200 feet. Then, to the amazement of those ... CONTINUE READING
21st Century
The third millennium dawned with an unforgettable image: New York’s twin towers collapsing in flames. The horror of 9/11, caught on bystanders’ camera-phones and beamed endlessly into living rooms around the world, heralded not only a new chapter in international relations, but ... CONTINUE READING
Tolkien’s Trees
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien – it is somehow unnerving to discover that he had real names rather than initials, and positively weird to learn that his friends called him simply ‘Ron' – loved trees, one in particular. It was a giant ... CONTINUE READING
Feedback 2025
So there it was: ‘Merry Christmas, everybody having fun’ (according to Noddy Holder at least). Now it’s time to ‘look to the future; it’s only just begun’. (ibid) As we take down the fairy lights and stare in shock at our credit card ... CONTINUE READING
The Merry Pubs of Oxford
Paul ’Silk' Silcock, landlord of The Gardener’s Arms in Plantation Road, leading by example. The Old Bookbinders is a ‘friendly, nook-and-cranny-filled’, ‘slightly shabby lovable’, ‘good solid Jericho pub’, ‘full of locals, posh students and OUP workers’. (That, at ... CONTINUE READING
What’s Your Oxford?
Iron Man in a puddle © Andrew Turner November is traditionally the month when we celebrate the legacy of the great Henry Taunt. We do so by showcasing some very fine photographs by some very fine photographers. ... CONTINUE READING
OxFem
On 12 January 2016, in front of a packed congregation in the Sheldonian Theatre, Professor Louise Richardson raised her right hand, undertook to observe the necessary 'statutes, privileges, liberties, and customs’, and declared Do Fidem: ‘I give my word’. ... CONTINUE READING