Oxford
I love how awful My Oxford Year is
The punters are saying My Oxford Year is a disaster. ‘Predictable, uninspiring and laughable,’ complains some meanie on Rotten Tomatoes.…
The boundless enthusiasm of Asa Briggs
A prodigy from the start, the tireless historian left his fellow academics panting behind him in a long and distinguished career
The crimes of Cecil Rhodes were every bit as sinister as those of the Nazis
Through bribery and ruthless exploitation, the unapologetic racist worked to unite Africa under British rule – with consequences that still haunt us today
An unlikely alliance: Drayton and Mackenzie, by Alexander Starritt, reviewed
Two university contemporaries with next to nothing in common find themselves working together to disrupt electricity generation with a scheme to turn tidal power into light
The Spectator letter that marked a turning point in gay history
Signing his real name (a brave decision for a homosexual in 1960), Roger Butler sparked a good deal of discussion on a ‘shunned topic’, which eventually led to a change in the law
Buckingham University’s shameful treatment of Professor Tooley
One of many reasons I felt blessed, seven years ago, to be offered a professorship at the private University of…
Why were the security services so obsessed with the Marxist historian Christopher Hill?
MI5 and Special Branch intercepted Hill’s mail for decades, but the former Master of Balliol was an impartial teacher and certainly no Soviet agent
‘Innovation is not enough’: meet visionary English painter Roger Wagner
In the side chapel of the church of St Giles’, at the northern apex of the historic Oxford thoroughfare, hangs…
Oxford has had enough of its Gaza protests
The ceasefire in Gaza may be holding, but student activists aren’t happy. Yesterday, ten students from the Oxford Action for…
The chilly charm of Clarissa Eden
Glamorous, enigmatic and well read, Anthony Eden’s wife was a discreet but unmistakable influence in Downing Street in the mid-1950s
Can W.H. Auden be called a war poet?
Though Auden maintained that the Great War had little effect on him, its catastrophe haunts his early poetry and shaped his anxiety about what it meant to be English
How universities raised a new generation of activists
It was only a matter of time before America’s student protests spread to the UK. In Oxford, tents have been…
Bugs, biscuits, trench foot: from the front line of the uni protests
On the grass in front of UCL’s main building, on Sunday night, there were about 30 tents and the portico…
What became of Thomas Becket’s bones?
Alice Roberts’s examinations of violent deaths in the past take her to the site of Becket’s murder in Canterbury cathedral and the later destruction of his shrine by Henry VIII
An Oxford spy ring is finally uncovered
Charles Beaumont’s warped group, recruited by an eccentric fellow of Jesus College, seems all too plausible. Other thrillers from Celia Walden and Matthew Blake
A farm in the Fells
‘Some days I feel like I’m drowning,’ admits Helen Rebanks, caught between cooking, housework, admin, tagging lambs and the school run at the Lake District family farm
On the run in Russia
Owen Matthews concludes his magnificent KGB trilogy, and there’s a thrilling debut from David McCloskey, a former CIA Middle East specialist
Fellowship of the Lamb
How a group of regulars are saving Tolkien’s pub
Letters
Troubles ahead? Sir: Jenny McCartney’s article ‘Border lines’ (1 October) was a profoundly depressing one. Perhaps there will be a…
Marching order
Why has Oxford killed off a much-loved Catholic college?
A sadder and a wiser man
‘Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.’ A.N. Wilson seems, on the surface, to have taken to heart…
The lady in the caravan
Towards the end of a long relationship – ‘resolved to have a conversation about the Future, which meant Separating’ –…
The great arbitrator
‘The law,’ according to W.S. Gilbert’s Lord Chancellor, ‘is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent’ and, by common consent,…
Who’s out
The negative discrimination of Oxbridge admissions
Character is king
Thriller writers are hard pressed to stand out in what’s become a very crowded field. As a result, from Cardiff…
