“... An older generation of my compatriots would regard an Oxford history of Australia as an oxymoron. Quite early in the preparation of my own volume in the series of that name, I became interested in Bill Somerville, a trade-unionist who for nearly forty years served as the workers’ representative on the industrial tribunal of Western Australia ...”

“... us that when in 1914 the newly-wed Arnold and Rosalind settled into ‘a modest little house’ in Oxford, they enjoyed the services of a ‘cook, parlourmaid, gardener (Mondays), plus Mrs Harris for mending and extra cleaning, and Mrs Massey, laundress’. Rosalind’s parents, the Murrays, lived on a grander scale until social change drastically reduced the ...”

“... new, something that could not be prescribed, was called for. What a pity we do not find it here. Oxford’s latest anthology deserves high praise. It is particularly welcome in that it follows a series of volumes with catchpenny titles – books of American light verse, ‘contemporary’ verse, and so on – that have made this publishing house look more ...”

“... this sort we don’t know. But in 1941 he told a congregation in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, that the desire for fame belongs to ‘hell rather than heaven’. It is possible that he would have contrived to regard the Lewis Societies rather as Browning regarded the Browning Societies (‘There’s a Me Society down at Cambridge’) and would have ...”

“... and downs’. The first was written as a schoolgirl dazzled by Aldous Huxley, the second begun at Oxford but torn up as too autobiographical. Some Tame Gazelle dates from the mid-Thirties, but wasn’t published (in revised form) until 1950. Its successor, Civil to Strangers, is the fourth novel to appear since Barbara Pym’s death in 1980. Hazel Holt, her ...”

“... who make Henry Ryecroft look distinctly SDP. Some of them had no doubt been educated at Oxford, where Englishmen were still taught how to play the game. A poem in the Oxford Magazine described the relief of Mafeking as the end of the Boer innings. After touring India in 1903 with the ...”

“... and wrote with sufficient extra-historical purchase to make it into Margaret Drabble’s Oxford Companion to English Literature (to his immoderate delight). His memoirs were a Book at Bedtime. He received the Légion d’honneur, was an FBA and a CBE. His birthday was in the Times. Cobb’s professional distinction was remarkable given his relatively ...”

“... one day become a writer (albeit a writer of horror stories). More recently he has been living in Oxford, first as a research student and then as Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College: and sure enough. Afternoon Raag now celebrates the uniqueness and the quiet pleasures of student life, with its ‘different rooms, its temporary enclosures and ...”

“... and Far from the Madding War, the best novel written about the Second World War, at any rate in Oxford. This last contains that inspired feature, Emmeline’s war work. Emmeline, niece of the head of an Oxford college, had been told that war meant destruction. She bought a priceless 15th-century tapestry, set it up on a ...”

“... art.’ This is incomprehensible, until it is observed from the cover note that Mr Hilton was at Oxford. Even so, either he was very unlucky or this is an example of that interesting and recurrent phenomenon in which a new generation discovers a well-known writer in its own terms and as it were originally. Mr Hilton goes on to speak – with reference to ...”

“... and labouring in vain’. In Loss and Gain (1848), his witty novel dramatising the route from Oxford to Rome, he dismisses private judgment with a humorous metaphor. Catholics, too, may use it, but ‘they use it ultimately to supersede it; as a man out of doors uses a lamp in a dark night, and puts it out when he gets home. What would be thought of his ...”

“... age of 16, and finally, against his father’s better judgment, to his getting permission to go to Oxford as a non-collegiate student. He had no money and as little society as he could have had in such circumstances, but he emerged as a fellow of All Souls, which he regarded as the beginning of his Oxford life. That was in ...”

“... friends he had made through Bletchley helped to secure Briggs a fellowship at Worcester College, Oxford. Teaching politics and economics on the newish PPE course, he soon won a reputation as ‘a very young don who sparkled with erudition’ and was equipped with a ferocious work-drive. His early morning lectures were packed out, and his contemporaries ...”

“... mistakes. Take, for instance, what Kemp has to tell us about the painting of the frescoes in the Oxford Union in 1857. ‘When he and a group of Pre-Raphaelite artists got together to paint the frescoes on Union Hall [sic], everyone involved felt that they were successfully resurrecting an ancient model of group work and group living.’ This is simply ...”