“... by claiming that the volume ‘shows, above all else, both that conservatism flourishes in Oxford and that conservative thought continues to make the running as it has throughout the past two decades.’ Really? Let us concede at once that there is more force in the first part of this statement than in the second. Here are 15 essays, of somewhat uneven ...”

“... of disaster. He attaches great importance to the fact that Wilde contracted syphilis while at Oxford, and has no doubt that the disease contributed to his early death: indeed he remarks that this ‘conviction is central to my conception of Wilde’s character and my interpretation of many things in his later life’. Wilde presumably thought himself ...”

“... there are some handsome pictures on first-class paper, the result of a collaboration between the Oxford University Press and the Pierpont Morgan Library. There are also 25 essays, some of them lazily written but four of them, at least, rather good. Three of the four are by Richard Usborne, the king of the traditional Wodehouse buffs. The other is by Benny ...”

“... what purpose do they serve? I can imagine looking up a name in James Hart’s fifth edition of The Oxford Companion to American Literature. Updated to include ‘authors not yet born when this book was first begun’, it offers abbreviated commentaries on such newly arrived figures on the scene as Diane Wakoski (1937-; cited here as ‘Wakowski’), Annie ...”

“... day; and the memory of a fruitless watch for the convoy three nights ago, at a roundabout on the Oxford ring-road, sours the prospect. Moreover, if the convoy is that close to Greenham, we’ll almost certainly miss it. Still, we decide to go. We take warm clothes, flasks of coffee and bars of chocolate, a torch. Pat takes her camera. The Campaign Atom ...”

“... abroad, but Halley was a sailing scientist from a very young age. His father sent him up to Oxford with state-of-the-art astronomical instruments, and subsidised his early research with an allowance – in current values – of £100,000 a year. But before he took his degree Halley’s influential friends had already arranged to send him to make ...”

“... in Stone. The marble floor of the Chapel of St Andrew in Westminster Cathedral.  University of Oxford, Museum of Natural History First, there are the alabasters, which are relatively soft. These are now divided into gypsum alabaster and calcite or onyx alabaster. Calcite alabaster from Egypt, commonly a creamy white with more translucent golden bands, is ...”

“... his father looks after Marilyn Monroe’s mink. The sun follows him to a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford: ‘It was the summer the astronauts walked on the moon. There was nothing more glamorous than an astronaut, not even the film stars with their minks.’ ‘It was the summer’ and its variations – ‘It was the summer of 1970, and sexual intercourse ...”

“... Weet Weet. At the age of 19 she won a scholarship to Royal Holloway, where she could read for the Oxford degree in English. But during her second year her father died and, in a Dickensian twist, he left the family skint; Davison’s mother took her children north and opened a shop. Davison became a governess, worked on her books at night and managed to save ...”

“... teaching. After Glasgow there were also six crucial years of freedom as a Snell Exhibitioner at Oxford, when Smith was pretty much left to his own devices, and enjoyed the quiet, sedentary life of a bibliophile. He taught himself French, and was able to immerse himself as much in French literature and philosophy as in the politics and ideas of the ...”

“... every language except his own. Even the Spencers were unable to give Jones everything he craved at Oxford: he wasn’t elected to the Regius Chair of Modern History and Languages (a long shot in his early twenties), or the Lord Almoner’s Professorship of Arabic (awarded to an inoffensive plodder), or even the university’s seat in Parliament, despite the ...”

“... in more than two dozen books and hundreds of newspaper columns, and in countless lectures to Oxford undergraduates and the history-minded public. One would expect this most controversial and heat-seeking of historians to attract a biographer, especially since he also had radical political views, a penchant for academic squabbling and a string of ...”

“... the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and to apply to study English at Balliol College, Oxford. This decisive shift of interest is subliminally traced in what ended up as the opening piece of Prince’s Collected, the early ‘An Epistle to a Patron’, a struggling architect’s bravura appeal for a commission, addressed to some Medici-style ...”

“... father. This family of Swedes sit in different seats, directly behind each other on the Gatwick-Oxford bus. I want to say I like your big bust. Which you try to disguise with a scarf. You’d like it smaller by half. I want to say, you’re so young today it’s almost painful. For both of us. And slightly disdainful to your grateful parents, patient, tamed ...”

“... the amenity and security of Harvard and expeditions to Berkeley and Cambridge, with side-trips to Oxford – milieux here described with knowing affection and only a touch of derision as pleasant, even hallowed surroundings, in which comfortable topics of discussion include the ins and outs of sexual harassment, the follies of economists, and the legitimacy ...”