“... whom Modern English Usage is dedicated. They produced a translation of Lucian, the first Concise Oxford Dictionary and, in 1905, a hugely successful grammar book called The King’s English. When war broke out both brothers lied about their age and joined up, only to be frustrated in their desire to be sent to the trenches. Frank died in 1918; in 1925 Henry ...”

“... I first came across Christopher Logue’s ‘account’ of the Iliad in 1975 at Oxford where I went to hear a vigorous reading by two young men of Patrocleia, his version of Book XVI. It was an opportunity to experience the poem in its original medium, by the ear rather than the eye. Homer himself had probably chanted his verses plucking the strings of a lyre, like the bard Demodocus in the Odyssey and for many centuries after his death people did not read Homer: they listened to skilled rhapsodes, whose dramatic delivery mesmerised audiences and earned the performers ample rewards, as we know from Plato’s Ion ...”

“... which now dominate the financial world. Robert’s son Val, Ian’s father, went to Eton and Oxford, became a Tory MP, and died a hero on the battlefield in May 1917. Val had two sons, the elder of whom, Peter, b. 1907, inherited the tendency to be a paragon, and the younger of whom, Ian, b. 1908, inevitably became the family handful. Things were not ...”

“... the new DNB it has ballooned to more than 8000. Now he has been canonised by the publication of an Oxford edition of his complete works, the second complete works in a century, more than have been accorded either Hobbes or Locke. The story of Winstanley’s life is easily told even if the reasons for his afterlife are less comprehensible. Born in Lancashire in ...”

“... of a well-to-do official in the War Office, and had a gentleman’s education at Westminster and Oxford. He seems to have been gay. His father hoped he might become a diplomat, but Lewis found the work tedious and turned his attention to drama and fiction. While serving in the British Embassy at The Hague at the age of 19, he embarked on The Monk: A ...”

“... Balliol, the only college that seemed suited to his intellectual ambitions. He had a good time at Oxford, but somehow didn’t quite fit in at Balliol, partly because of the unexpected presence in the college of ‘blacks and Rhodes scholars’ and, outside it, of impudent women students. As Norman Rose remarks, this 18-year-old already displayed a lifelong ...”

“... this), nor did she write Jill or A Girl in Winter. She existed mainly, it seems, to keep a few Oxford friends – Bruce Montgomery (Edmund Crispin), Diana Gollancz and the dreadful Kingsley Amis – amused. Brunette’s work was read aloud to Montgomery and Gollancz after evenings at the pub, and its progress discussed in salacious detail in letters ...”

“... of the North’, ‘the depressed peasantry of the South-West’, ‘the cantankerous clergy of Oxford and Cambridge’. It was no surprise to Plumb that the main strength of the Jacobite movement derived from ‘the tribal ferocity’ of the Scottish Highlands – confirmation that Jacobitism was not a historical topic of the first rank, but an ...”

“... one of Shirley’s very few star pupils, Carole, now vice president of a City bank by way of Oxford; and Morgan, a non-binary Twitter influencer and huge fan of Amma’s plays who’s been paid to tweet-review the evening in ‘attention-seeking soundbites’. Amma isn’t Clarissa Dalloway, though, and this isn’t a novel about her party. The opening ...”

“... the Mojito cupcakes,’ said his sidekick. ‘Totally amazing.’ A quick call to the bookshops of Oxford reveals that they’re doing a decent trade in Heinz Baked Beans (Hamlyn, £6.99), but my relief at the survival of old customs was short-lived when I studied a copy. Bean and Red Pepper Sushi, anyone? Pumpkin, Bean and Tomato Risotto? Just goes to ...”

“... Harrison’s Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing, a scientific and historical study, is due from Oxford in March. The condition has been dismissed by at least one anonymous ‘notable scientist’ as ‘romantic neurology’, but in the foreword to Synaesthesia, Simon Baron-Cohen says: this book will do much to educate the general public about the important ...”

“... In Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth (Oxford, £50), Yulia Ustinova argues that ‘Plato’s image of the cave as a place of ignorance’ is anomalous, and that for many Greeks not only was ‘actual physical descent into the darkness of a cave … a way to enlightenment’ but ‘passage through a ...”

“... Nurturing was never my strong point. But on recent Monday nights, when Corpus Christi College, Oxford was competing in University Challenge on television, those same stomach-eroding, unreasonable juices started flowing at the sight of its team captain, Gail Trimble, to whom I have no duty of care at all. Even so, I took to closing my eyes and lala-ing ...”

“... was not unstoppably brilliant, and it took him until he was 19 to land a place at Balliol College, Oxford, as a commoner. This meant that his parents had to scrape to supplement the loan available from Kent County Council. Luckily, the boy’s musical abilities secured him the College’s organ scholarship during his first term, making for proud ...”

“... of Oxbridge. For, after Cambridge and the war, Williams was one of a notable band recruited to the Oxford Extra-Mural Delegacy by Thomas Hodgkin. Thomas, who was my dearly beloved tutor and friend, often described to me, not without bitterness, how the Delegacy fell victim to an early form of British McCarthyism. Many of those Thomas employed were, like ...”