Oxford
By Patten or design?
My old friend Richard Ingrams was said always to write The Spectator’s television reviews sitting in the next-door room to…
Oxford in my day was another, better world
I was in the attic killing some Taleban on Medal of Honor when Girl interrupted and said: ‘Dad, what’s this?’…
The Spectator’s notes
Surely there is a difference between Mark Carney’s intervention in the Scottish referendum last year and in the EU one…
The Spectator’s notes
Here is a thought for all those Tory MPs calculating their personal advantage in the forthcoming EU referendum: unless the…
High life
Gstaad I had the rather subversive idea of offering a six-figure sum to Oriel College, Oxford. On one condition: that…
The Spectator’s notes
In 2000, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, accused Magdalen College, Oxford, of class bias in failing to…
‘So quick and chancy’
When asked the question ‘What is art?’, Andy Warhol gave a characteristically flip answer (‘Isn’t that a guy’s name?’). On…
Larkin’s misty parks and moors — in all their lacerating beauty
When Philip Larkin went up to St John’s College, Oxford, in the early 1940s, he found himself in a world…
Charles Williams: sadist or Rosicrucian saint?
Charles Williams was a bad writer, but a very interesting one. Most famous bad writers have to settle, like Sidney…
What an absolute darling you are!
Iris Murdoch’s emotionally hectic novels have been enjoying a comeback lately, with an excellent Radio 4 dramatisation of The Sea,…
I knew it! All these toffs have depraved tastes
A friend of mine once watched Jeremy Corbyn try to rape an owl. This was the early to mid-1980s. The…
Pigs, pranks, but no Dave
Memories of partying with the notorious Piers Gaveston Society at Oxford
Universal appeal
As a novelist, Iain Pears doesn’t repeat himself, and he gives with a generous hand. In Arcadia, he provides a…
Degrees in disaster
From Greece to Kenya, the worst economic ideas come from alumni of British universities
From Major to minor
‘Lobbying,’ writes William Waldegrave in this extraordinary memoir, ‘takes many forms.’ But he has surely reported a variant hitherto unrecorded…
‘What will they do when I am gone?’
Edward Thomas was gloomy as Eeyore. In 1906 he complained to a friend that his writing ‘was suffering more &…
Reuniondues
A couple of weeks ago I returned to my old Oxford college for a ‘gaudy’ — posh, Oxford-speak for a…
Remembering Raymond
Laughter, bird-watching and erudition with Raymond Carr
Let posh people run the arts – if it means they stop running the country
What should we do with James Blunt? This is what I have been asking myself. And I am not looking…
Beautiful dreamer
Despite it being a well known fact that Antonia Fraser had earthly parents, I had always imagined that she had…
Our homes inhabit us
Depending on your approach, home is where your heart is, where you hang your hat, or possibly where you hang…
Crash course
Britain is now run by Oxford PPE graduates. The consequences have been disastrous
The age of consent
Universities are forcing undergraduates to attend sex education classes. Poor students
Sight and sound
A strange coincidence on Saturday night to come back from the cinema, having seen a film about a woman fighting…
Journey’s end
Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started…
