“... changed our lives, no less.’ On the other hand, Ronald Hingley, translator of the nine-volume Oxford Chekhov, strikes a note of peevish judiciousness: ‘Though Garnett is far from the least competent of Chekhov translators, her English is marred by an element of quaintness.’ a comparison of Garnett’s ‘Sleepy’ with Hingley’s less quaint ...”

“... He had spent a short time at Ruskin, on a trade-union scholarship, and had fallen in love with Oxford. As Jenkins puts it, ‘it became almost his central purpose that I should go there as a full member of the University.’ Though he does not say so in so many words, the son arrived at Balliol carrying his father’s hopes in his luggage like a ...”

“... so happens that during the 1950s, the first great age of molecular biology, the English schools of Oxford and particularly of Cambridge produced more than a score of graduates of quite outstanding ability – much more brilliant, inventive, articulate and dialectically skilful than most young scientists; right up in the Watson class. But Watson had one ...”

“... who, for all her startling title of News International Lecturer in Language and Communication at Oxford, steers clear, as a careful academic always will, of situations that would carry her beyond her sources. These have to do with class or, as her subtitle has it, with ‘accent as social symbol’. (I’m not sure that the master taxonomist of ...”

“... In 1986, David Kinloch and I organised a festival of Australian poetry at St John’s College, Oxford and invited Porter to speak about contemporary Australian poetry. In his talk Porter paid tribute to Murray, whom he described as the greatest Australian poet. We already knew that. When we took Porter out for an Indian meal afterwards we tried to conceal ...”

“... in December 2007. Posh, eager, with a Palestinian keffiyeh around his neck, Ken was fresh out of Oxford and very keen. He never missed a meeting, and was always offering to arrange extra ones. He thought environmental activism should take bigger risks, he said. This was all very welcome but some things about him made us uneasy. Activists love meetings, but ...”

“... history, the ‘convert-novelist’ Evelyn Waugh had offered some barbed advice to the young Oxford historian, whom Waugh presumed to have disgraced: the only ‘honourable course’ open to him was to ‘change his name and seek a livelihood at Cambridge’. Decades later Auberon Waugh would exploit the Hitler Diaries affair to continue his father’s ...”

“... only be enhanced by a knowledge of where and when they originated and how they evolved. But the Oxford Guide to Card Games will be of great value to experts too, assembling as it does a mass of information and laying it out according to a well-thought-out scheme. The book is a triumph of compression. Card games are exceedingly diverse and exceedingly ...”

“... The publication of the first volume of the New Oxford History of England series, under the general editorship of J.M. Roberts, is something of an awesome event. Generations of schoolchildren and students thumbed their way through their predecessors, Davies and Clark, Woodward and Ensor, and it must be an agreeable thought to the new authors that their books will be selling deep into the 21st century ...”

“... of the Reform Bill and the Whigs who reluctantly supported him. To deliver the Romanes Lecture in Oxford is a legendary achievement. At least I thought so until a few months ago when I was invited to deliver one. Why me? Useless to speculate. More urgently, what on earth should I talk about? No original ideas simmered in my head. Hastily I ransacked my ...”

“... misled me. Several years ago I was with him in a sunny, leafy garden. As I sat before him in his Oxford and Cambridge straw hat (or not – I certainly recall his wife Marlene’s referring to such garments in fine satiric vein), I spoke eagerly to him of my new admiration for the stories of our Canadian contemporary Alice Munro – only to learn that he ...”

“... to be made. My wife and I flew to the UK last summer to see our daughter receive her DPhil at Oxford. On arriving, I found myself increasingly short of breath. Within a few days I was having difficulty, for the first time in my life, walking up gentle slopes or climbing a flight of stairs. A private doctor whom I consulted found my blood oxygen level to ...”

“... are now flocking to Prague. I suppose revolutions always attract the wrong people. When I was at Oxford in 1956 some smart Balliol undergraduates felt that the Hungarian Uprising would benefit from their presence. They sent round an appeal for funds, pointing out that a contingent was going from Cambridge, so it was important that ...”

“... A collection of fugitive pieces, Carnival, Hysteria and Writing, will be published by Oxford next year with an introduction by Stuart Hall, with whom Allon studied at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. It seems appropriate, on the reappearance of Allon’s brief autobiography, to memorialise him in this column, though it may ...”

“... would hear his own tone of voice echoing more clearly from John Agard’s witty poem ‘Listen Mr Oxford Don’ than from most of the verse printed in, for example, this paper or the TLS: Dem accuse me of assault on de Oxford Dictionary/ imagine a peaceful man like me/ dem want me serve time for inciting rhyme to riot ...”