Oxford Rambles

Ashmolean Museum

Just 18 Miles from our modest hovel lies the city of the "Dreaming Spires", the historic University City of Oxford. The City is famous the world over for its University and place in history. For over 800 years, it has been a home to royalty and scholars, and since the 9th century an established town, although people are known to have lived in the area for thousands of years. So, last Saturday suffering from post election blues and with a meeting in Oxford we headed over for a ramble amongst Academiae Oxoniensia with a visit to the fascinating Museum of Science, a ramble through the lively covered market (an antidote to clone town British High Streets) and a browse and some judicious purchases in Blackwell’s specialist music shop. Then to cap it all over to Jericho for Dinner with friends in the ever reliable Bistro Blanc, the Brasserie chain named after the two Michelin Star French Chef, Raymond Blanc who describes it thus;





“Oxford was my first love, close to the Manoir in a town that I now call home. Two houses in the Jericho area of the city formed the base for the building of what was then called Petit Blanc. Not a classical Brasserie in the true sense of the word, it is split into two main rooms and a small private dining room. This gives it an intimate and bubbly atmosphere. The first room has light from three sides, bathing diners throughout the day whilst the back room has a view on my little garden. This Garden Room is available for private hire and can accommodate up to 110 guests. The small Salon Prive holds about 12 people and it pleases me to see it often used for family celebrations, the noise spilling out into the main restaurant. Most Sundays I have lunch here, chez moi.”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/brasserie-blanc.html

I enjoyed an excellent feastie @ Bistro Blanc where everything was just right. To start I had a Leek & potato soup followed by grilled Ocean Perch with prawn potatoes and rosemary butter. All this was then capped by a Kirsch Savarin with poached red fruits and crème fraiche and washed down with an excellent glass of Domaine de la Provequiere VDP Sauvignon Blanc.



This is the “Lunch with wine” menu which is available for £14.95 for three courses and a glass of wine not just at lunchtime but (as for us) in the early evening from 5.30 to 7.30. At this price for this standard of cooking and surroundings it is a rather attractive deal, n’est pas?


Fishmonger in the Covered Market

Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and lays claim to nine centuries of continuous existence. As an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research, Oxford attracts students and scholars from across the globe, with almost a quarter of the students from overseas. More than 130 nationalities are represented among a student population of over 18,000. Oxford is a collegiate university, with 39 self-governing colleges related to the University in a type of federal system. There are also seven Permanent Private Halls, founded by different Christian denominations. Thirty colleges and all halls admit students for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Seven other colleges are for graduates only; one has Fellows only, and one specializes in part-time and continuing education. Here is how to tour Oxford in a day whilst avoiding the usual tourist traps on DC’s famous ROT* (* Reduced Oxford Tour)

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-in-oxford.html


Sheldonian Theatre

The colleges function more like halls of residence than educational institutions in their own right. Students’ social lives revolve around the colleges in which they are enrolled, but teaching is often organised university-wide. The practical result is a city-wide campus that requires one to watch out for student bikers whizzing by on their way to lectures or classes at different colleges. Also, there seems to be a certain cachet to having the oldest and squeakiest bike possible, and bicycle helmets are unheard of.


The Tower of Magdalen College where at dawn on the 1st May the Choiristers ascend to the top and sing Matins to welcome the summer.

With so much learning going on Oxford contains many homes to the Muses or Museums to give them their more familiar title. There is the Pitts River Museum, The Museum of Oxford, The Museum of the History of Science, The Bates Collection of Musical Instruments, The Christchurch Picture Gallery and The Oxford Museum of Natural History. Oxford's museums and collections are world renowned. They provide an important resource for scholars around the world, and welcome visits from members of the public. More than a million people visit the University’s museums and collections every year. For me from all this abundance of riches one of my favourite places to visit is what has been the somewhat forbidding and eccentric Ashmolean Museum. So we did again today for tea before heading to the original building in High Street beside the Sheldonian Theatre .



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/oxfords-ashmolean-museum.html



On this Saturday there was a graduation (or conferring in Oxford Speak) at the Sheldonian and in the Oxford tradition the gown draped students walk (process, in Oxford Speak) from their College with their tutors to receive their degrees after which they can wear the mortar board hats which denote they are graduates. The graduation ceremonies are from each college so they tend to be small scale with the students and families and friends dressed up to the nines for this happy occasion. Oxford is hugely competitive to get into and there is a considerable sense of achievement on these occasions, a contrast to Britain’s worst University in Wolverhampton.


Off to Conferring


Back from Conferring

Here are some shots and reflections on Oxford in the busy run up to Xmas where the streets are more lively than normal with entertainers and evangelists!

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/xmas-is-coming.html



The proposition of setting a mathematical thriller in Oxford is interesting and has some previous form. A mathematician and Divine of Christchurch College Oxford, Charles Dodgson published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, under the pen-name Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier -- Lewis Carroll. The texts of Lewis Carroll’s works are littered with mathematics and probability even if Alice gets some of it wrong!



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/05/oxford-murders.html

On the way back after our early dinner at Bistro Blanc we stopped off at the wonderful Notley Abbey near Thame where the actors Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh spent their happiest years. It still entices with its wonderful languorous and secluded setting surrounded by branches and pools of the River Thame which first enticed monks to build their abbey here in the 12th Century. Vivien & Larry first saw the Abbey in 1943.



It was overgrown and in desperate need of restoration. Larry instantly fell in love with it, especially since he found out that it had been endowed by Henry V. Vivien was sceptical and considered it hopeless. Much of the home could not be viewed from inside because ceilings were caving, floors rotting, and pipes were broken. Nevertheless, the Olivier’s purchased it in February 1945 and immediately began work on it. Vivien, too, soon fell in love with the Abbey. They put all their savings into repairing the Abbey. They focused on the large hall, study, 3 reception rooms, and bedrooms. With the help of decorators Sybil Colfax and John Fowler, Vivien put her personal touch in each room of Notley. Regency stripes were used and large pieces of furniture and artwork were chosen.






Notley Abbey

"I will have everything that I want at Notley – as well as my husband” Vivien Leigh once said.

"Of all the houses I've lived in over the years, Notley is my favourite. It was absolutely enchanting, and it enchanted me. At Notley I had an affair with the past. For me it had mesmeric power; I could easily drown in its atmosphere. I could not leave it alone, I was a child lost in its history. Perhaps I loved it too much, if that is possible." - Laurence Olivier in Confessions of an Actor




Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh at Notley Abbey

Everybody who was anybody in the world of Stage and Screen in the 1950s made their way to Notley where the Oliviers were famed for their hospitality.


The Oxford made Mini in cake in the Covered Market

Home tired yet refreshed. Oxford still casts its spell and seems a unique place in this world. A busy town, a wealthy town whose house prices match London, a working town where the tradition of motor car manufacture pioneered by Morris Garages (MG) is kept alive at the Mini Plant at Cowley. But it is a City with a different demographic, where you can wander through the world’s biggest university bookshop, wander among its 39 Colleges and its Halls with associated libraries, laboratories and playing fields. It is an International City with students, staff, researchers and tourists from across the globe. A cultured city where you can go to six museums or at least 10 classical concerts on any given day.


Situated in Cornmarket is the oldest building in Oxford, dating from 1040. The tower of St Michael at the Northgate is Saxon in origin.

But for all that it is a quintessentially English City with at its heart a Saxon Tower over a thousand years old and where one of its best known writers was a J.R. Tolkien who was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University. The Anglo-Saxons were the people who ruled England for 600 years, forming the basis of its culture, language and borders and who gave it its name.




Black Tulip at the Ashmolean

The writer Matthew Arnold summed up Oxford’s special sense of place best;

Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening

- Matthew Arnold


All Souls College

Armistice Day 2009 - End of a generation

The passing of the First World War generation was marked by a special memorial service at Westminster Abbey today as millions of people across Britain and Europe observed the two-minute Armistice Day silence.

Ninety-one years after the guns fell silent at 11am on 11th November, 1918, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh joined Gordon Brown, senior politicians and the heads of the armed forces in the solemn ceremony which commemorated the passing of the final three veterans of the war living in Britain, who all died this year. William Stone died in January, aged 108, followed in July by Henry Allingham, 113, and Harry Patch, 111. The only remaining British-born survivor of the war, former seaman Claude Choules, who is 108 now lives in Australia.


Poppies in the fountains at Trafalgar Square

Few can have been unmoved by the poignant sight at the last commemoration at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London of these last surviving veterans of the First World War joining serving soldiers in current conflicts to mark the 90th anniversary of the day peace returned to Europe. Then Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone led the nation as it remembered the sacrifices made by the 1914-1918 generation. They each represented the armed service they belonged to - for Mr Allingham the Royal Air Force, Mr Patch the Army and Mr Stone the Royal Navy. All three men laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to commemorate Armistice Day. Sadly, but not too surprisingly, all have now died since that ceremony.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/farewell-old-soldiers.html


Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone

Being in Westminster and not too far from the Abbey which was the venue for the ceremonies you notice the minutiae of these occasions, the police checking lampposts and sealing manhole covers before hand, the veterans with their medals heading to the ceremony, the Guards colour party in great coats and bearskins marching briskly along the footpath from Wellington Barracks, the ambassador’s cars with their flags going down Toothill Street and the boom of the field in Green Park announcing at 11 the beginning of the silence and two minutes later the boom announcing it ending. Why Gordon Brown’s car passed along Petty France this morning on his way to the Abbey taking a different route from the back of Downing Street to the front of the Abbey. As is the way here these ceremonies are well oiled and practiced with no need for self important motorcades or grandiosity. Wars are and, we sometimes forget, have always been controversial but the orchestrated personal attacks on Gordon Brown by Rupert Murdoch and the tatty Sun “newspaper” represents a new low by the Dirty Digger and his hired help who arrogantly feel they can manipulate the British Public and British Democracy.


Theipval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme

But none of this controversy about current military engagements should in any way to detract from the personal heroism or sacrifice of soldiers in battle and it is right that their bravery is commemorated each year on Armistice Sunday, the service held on the Sunday closest to Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the fighting in World War 1 at 11.00 am on the 11th November 1918. Indeed when you read the obituaries of those who served in the wars and the enormous responsibilities and decisions they had to undertake at a tender age you somehow feel that those of us whose lives have not been tempered by war have somehow led shallow lives by contrast. However we largely read about those who survive, not those who perished.

This was brought home to me some years ago when I made a personal journey to the battle fields for there were deaths on both sides of my family in the First World War. My wife’s great uncle Edward Kenny who died with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and my Great Uncle, James McMahon who died with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Beaurevoir in the Ainse 5 weeks before the end of the war in 1918.


Private Edward Kenny

Private Edward Kenny, originally from Edenderry, Co. Offaly had fallen with the 2nd. Bn. Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, at the Somme on the 27th August 1916 and he’s commemorated alongside 72,088 others at the dramatic “Monument to the Fallen” memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens at Thiepval on the D73 road between Baupaume and Albert. This monument is for soldiers who fell at the Somme who have no known grave or were not identified and his name is inscribed on panel 15C. The entry in "Ireland's Memorial Record" shows he was 24 when he died. To escape from poverty in Ireland they had moved to Bonnybridge near Glasgow and worked in the summer months as “tattie hokers”, the term for agricultural labourer’s who worked on the back breaking potato (tatties in the Scots dialect) harvest for bed and board and low wages. He joined up with the venerable Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders who are based at Scotland’s historic Stirling Castle and is commemorated on the Roll of Honour there and at The Scottish War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle. Disgracefully, to visit the latter you have to pay an expensive admission charge into the tourist theme park which is the modern Edinburgh Castle. We were able to trace his war record from a photo which showed the distinctive hat band of the Argyle and Sutherlands. His brother (my wife’s maternal grandfather) served in the Merchant Navy during the war and survived to live to a ripe old age.


Edward Kenny's War record Card - Transferred to France 13/9/1915 - KIA 27/8/1916


Edward Kenny commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record" Click to see a larger image

My great uncle who fell in WW1 was Private James Mc Mahon of the 6th. Bn. Royal Dublin Fusiliers and by coincidence he hailed from Clara, Co. Offaly, the same county as my wife’s great uncle. Unlike my wife’s relative James McMahon has a grave in the Aisne, the Department beyond the Somme whose capital is Cambrai and where the front line had stopped when the hostilities ended with the Armistice at 11 in the morning on the 11th November 1918. James McMahon was killed on the 8th October 1918 at a village called Beaurevoir, one of roundly 90 young Dublin Fusiliers who were killed from the 8th to 11th October and are buried with him in the cemetery. He was killed, aged 20, just over 4 weeks from the end of the war taking part in the so called “March to Victory” which lasted for 100 days until the Armistice. While not obvious today when viewing the sleepy countryside, in 1918 this was the last part of the fortified Hindenburg Line being attacked by tired and inexperienced British Troops resulting in disproportionate casualties amongst the attackers.


James McMahon's grave Beaurevoir, Aisne, France

Like all the Commonwealth cemeteries it is beautifully maintained and lies on the edge of the village with the standard layout of the Cross of Remembrance and a shelter for visitors which also holds the Book of Remembrance. James lies in a row of other Dublin Fusiliers aged from 18 to 21 with his name on the headstone given as “B. J. McMahon”. I wasn’t expecting to feel a great deal of connection with somebody who died so many years before I was born but being there amongst the graves of so many young Irish soldiers who all died on the 8th October 1918 was surprisingly moving.


James McMahon commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record"

In our fallen relatives home towns of Edenderry and Clara there are still “British Legion” houses provided for ex-soldiers and their families and in the decades of poverty and economic stagnation many Irish families were quietly grateful for the “War Pensions” they received. Ireland was neutral during the Second World War but many served in the British forces and many also worked in England both to survive and help the war effort including my Grandfather and two uncles who travelled on British Legion travel warrants and worked for the electronics firm Lucas in Birmingham during the war whilst living in a company dormitory. My father at the age of ten and his family on the other hand came in the other direction as refugees from the devastating blitz in Coventry.



On Armistice Day I too am proud to wear a poppy not in support of British Militarism or to legitimise the wanton waste of life in war. Rather I wear it to remember the great sacrifice of Edward Kenny and James McMahon and all their comrades who made a brave personal choice to fight for the greater freedom of humanity and paid the ultimate price for their beliefs.


Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun VC

I leave the last word to the “Last Tommy” Harry Patch who thought that his comrade’s sacrifice had been in vain because what the world achieved was not “Peace in our Time” but rather it set the scene for the conflict of WW11. He expressed himself movingly and plainly in interviews in 2004;


Harry Patch 1898 - 2009

“I was taken back to England to convalesce. When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle — thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

......."It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it."

See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html

Farewell Harry Patch: funeral of Britain's last Tommy

The funeral service for Britain's last surviving World War I veteran Harry Patch who died aged 111 has taken place at Wells Cathedral in Somerset.



Thousands of people lined the streets of Wells as his coffin was taken to the cathedral where the service was relayed on big screens to crowds outside.



At the end of the funeral service two bugles sounded the Last Post.



A quiet man who did not talk about the war in public until he was 100, he may have been surprised to see that his passing led television and radio bulletins and prompted banner headlines in the Sunday papers. "Too many died... war isn't news," he once said. When he is buried with him will go the last living connection to World War 1 and this cataclysmic event will finally be “History”.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/farewell-old-soldiers.html





http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/08/world-war-one-in-slideshow.html

World War One In SlideShow

We now know that the war to end all wars did nothing of the sort and did little for “small nations” either. It is hard to explain the “Causes of the Great War.” In his weighty book of the same name the historian A.J.P. Taylor cannot come to a definitive conclusion but, as he observes, it was the first truly industrialised war and it was industrialisation which made possible the scale of the awful bloodbath as “Defence was mechanised but attack was not,” The aim of the domino effect of the alliances which clicked robot like into action after the assassinations in Sarajevo was to preserve the established order, “For King and Country” as it was expressed in Britain.



But after the dust had settled there were no more Hapsburgs, Romanoff’s, Hohenzollern’s or Ottomans and the Saxe-Coburg Gotha’s had become “Windsor’s”. The war and the humiliating peace left a legacy of instability both in Europe and in the former Ottoman territories only some of which has been resolved today. It removed a whole generation and those left behind bore deep scars. They included a French Captain, Charles De Gaulle, left for dead by his own side at Verdun in no-man’s land for two days before being taken prisoner by the Germans, an Austrian corporal Adolph Hitler who was gassed and wounded and unemployed after the war in a collapsed German economy who concluded his country was not defeated on the battlefield but by its own lack of willpower and subversive elements on the home front who were not “proper Germans” The novelist J.R. Tolkien was a survivor of the Somme and wrote a mythological parable of the horror and inhumanity of mechanised warfare and a plea for the decency of humanity, “The Lord of the Rings.”



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html

Farewell Old Soldiers

Armistice Day London 2008

I am hardly a supporter of British Militarism or military adventurism which the Red Tops treat as some jolly jape under the heading of “supporting our boys” or “finishing the job.” This begs the questions, too rarely asked in the same Red Tops, of what are we supporting and what is the job? Indeed I’ve pointed out elsewhere that Britain’s colonial history contains many disgraceful episodes when it acted as the Great Imperial Bully and we have also decidedly mixed feelings in Ireland on this count.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/britain-in-iraq.html

But none of this is in any way to detract from the personal heroism or sacrifice of soldiers in battle and it is right that their bravery is commemorated each year on Armistice Sunday, the service held on the Sunday closest to Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the fighting in World War 1 at 11.00 am on the 11th November 1918. Indeed when you read the obituaries of those who served in the wars and the enormous responsibilities and decisions they had to undertake at a tender age you somehow feel that those of us whose lives have not been tempered by war have somehow led shallow lives by contrast. However we largely read about those who survive, not those who perished.

Few can have been unmoved by the poignant sight at the last commemoration at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London of three of the last surviving veterans of the First World War joining serving soldiers in current conflicts to mark the 90th anniversary of the day peace returned to Europe. Henry Allingham, 112, Harry Patch, 110, and Bill Stone, 108, led the nation as it remembered the sacrifices made by the 1914-1918 generation. They each represented the armed service they belonged to - for Mr Allingham the Royal Air Force, Mr Patch the Army and Mr Stone the Royal Navy. All three men laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to commemorate Armistice Day. Sadly, but not too surprisingly, all have now died since that ceremony.



Henry Allingham, who was in the Royal Naval Air Service in the war and later with the RAF, was the world's oldest man when he died 12 days ago aged 113. Since his death, the last WWI veteran in Britain, Harry Patch, has also died. Mr Patch was conscripted into the Army aged 18 and fought in the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British soldiers died. At the end of the service the bells of St Nicholas's tolled 113 times, once for each year of his life, and five replica World War One planes - Mr Allingham was the last surviving member of the Royal Naval Air Service and a founder member of the Royal Air Force - performed a flypast.


Henry Allingham, 1896 - 2009



The veteran was being buried with full military honours. Guests included the Duchess of Gloucester; the veterans minister Kevan Jones and senior figures from the Royal Navy and the Air Force. Henry Allingham was, at the age of 113, the world's oldest man when he died on July 18 and, with Harry Patch, one of Britain's last two survivors from the Great War. Harry Patch died exactly week later, making Claude Choules, 108, who lives in Australia, the last living British veteran of the war.

Mr Allingham's medals were carried by two of his 16 great-grandchildren who are both currently serving in the US Navy, his late daughter Jean had gone to America after WW2 as a GI Bride. Outside, a crowd of hundreds watched as the service was relayed on a big screen. Among them was Dennis Goodwin, founder and chair of the First World War Veterans' Association, who said he would never forget Mr Allingham. "I have been to many veterans' funerals but this is most special because it coincides with the end of an era." There are now only three surviving veterans of the First World War, none of them living in the UK.

John Babcock, who turned 109 on 23 July, was with Canada's Boys Battalion in England but the war ended before he turned 18 and could go to the front.

Frank Buckles, 108, joined the American army aged just 16 and was held in reserve in England from December 1917. After six months he was sent to France but never saw action on the frontline.

Claude Choules, 108, served with the Royal Navy during World War I. Originally from Worcestershire, he now lives in Perth, Australia.



The First World War and the Flu Epidemic of 1918/19 produced a death toll of unimaginable proportion and we should not forget the callousness with which lives were thrown away. Indeed, in a telling indication of the attitude among the General Staff to casualties there were more allied deaths on the morning of 11th November 1918 alone than there were on D-Day in 1944. The respected American author Joseph E Persico has calculated a shocking figure that the final day of WWI would produce nearly 11,000 casualties, more than those killed, wounded or missing on D-Day, when Allied forces landed en masse on the shores of occupied France almost 27 years later. What is worse is that hundreds of these soldiers would lose their lives thrown into action by generals who knew that the Armistice had already been signed. The recklessness of General Wright, of the 89th American Division, is a case in point. Seeing his troops were exhausted and dirty, and hearing there were bathing facilities available in the nearby town of Stenay, he decided to take the town so his men could refresh themselves. "That lunatic decision cost something like 300 casualties, many of them battle deaths, for an inconceivable reason," says Mr Persico.


Bill Stone, 1900 - 2009

It was with this in mind that I made a personal journey to the battle fields for there were deaths on both sides of my family in that war. Edward Kenny who died with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and my Great Uncle, James McMahon who died with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Beaurevoir in the Ainse 5 weeks before the end of the war in 1918. When I visited James McMahon’s grave I wasn’t expecting to feel a great deal of connection with somebody who died so many years before I was born but being there amongst the graves of so many young Irish soldiers who all died on the 8th October 1918 was surprisingly moving.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html


Grave of my Great Uncle, James McMahon,1898 - 1918, Beaurevoir, France.

We now know that the war to end all wars did nothing of the sort and did little for “small nations” either. It is hard to explain the “Causes of the Great War.” In his weighty book of the same name the historian A.J.P. Taylor cannot come to a definitive conclusion but, as he observes, it was the first truly industrialised war and it was industrialisation which made possible the scale of the awful bloodbath as “Defence was mechanised but attack was not,” The aim of the domino effect of the alliances which clicked robot like into action after the assassinations in Sarajevo was to preserve the established order, “For King and Country” as it was expressed in Britain.

But after the dust had settled there were no more Hapsburgs, Romanoff’s, Hohenzollern’s or Ottomans and the Saxe-Coburg Gotha’s had become “Windsor’s”. The war and the humiliating peace left a legacy of instability both in Europe and in the former Ottoman territories only some of which has been resolved today. It removed a whole generation and those left behind bore deep scars. They included a French Captain, Charles De Gaulle, left for dead by his own side at Verdun in no-man’s land for two days before being taken prisoner by the Germans, an Austrian corporal Adolph Hitler who was gassed and wounded and unemployed after the war in a collapsed German economy who concluded his country was not defeated on the battlefield but by its own lack of willpower and subversive elements on the home front who were not “proper Germans” The novelist J.R. Tolkien was a survivor of the Somme and wrote a mythological parable of the horror and inhumanity of mechanised warfare and a plea for the decency of humanity, “The Lord of the Rings.”

The “Last Tommy” Harry Patch thought that his comrade’s sacrifice had been in vain because what the world achieved was not “Peace in our Time” but rather it set the scene for the conflict of WW11. He expressed himself movingly in interviews in 2004;

“I was taken back to England to convalesce. When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle — thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

......."It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it."


Ypres

Harry Patch will be buried after a service at Wells Cathedral near Bath this coming Thursday 6th August. A quiet man who did not talk about the war in public until he was 100, he may have been surprised to see that his passing led television and radio bulletins and prompted banner headlines in the Sunday papers. "Too many died... war isn't news," he once said. When he is buried with him will go the last living connection to World War 1 and this cataclysmic event will finally be “History”.

No doubt his passing will be marked with full military honours and the greatest respect, as is only right. But, is this Irish Republican alone in thinking that on such a momentous occasion, as a token of respect to all who died, his passing should be marked with nothing less than a full State Funeral? And am I alone in feeling that the Queen should break with convention and attend this last opportunity to honour first hand all those who fought in her Grandfather’s name “For King and Country”? Even a non-royalist would be churlish to suggest she has not always shown good judgement and felt the pulse of the Nation. I cannot imagine that her sound instincts are saying anything to her other than “We shall be there” to say farewell to this remarkable old soldier.


Harry Patch 1898 - 2009

A Day in Oxford.

Radcliffe Camera


Christchurch Dining Hall

18 Miles from Castle Caldwell lays the city of the "Dreaming Spires", the historic University City of Oxford. For all its attractions it can be a difficult city for the first time visitor to find their way around and see the parts which capture the athmosphere and sense of purpose of this ancient seat of learning. What visitors find here is not a single University campus but a jumble of colleges, libraries, museums, fine shops and other buildings. Added to this, Oxford City Council actively tries to preserve the character of the historic centre by discouraging cars and through traffic and encouraging walking, cycling and public transport. Car restrictions are rigorously enforced, including by remote cameras, so if not arriving by train or coach it is best to use the “Park and Ride” facilities on the outskirts of Oxford or the car parks on the edge of the centre. So this ROT (Reduced Oxford Tour) is in the traditions of our

RLT Reduced London Tour http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/09/day-in-london.html

and its aim is to show you the real Oxford as cheaply as possible and keep you out of overpriced and tacky tourist attractions. But, before the ROT, some history to put it all into context.



"The Dreaming Spires"


Oxford, is famous the world over for its University and place in history. For over 800 years, it has been a home to royalty and scholars, and since the 9th century an established town, although people are known to have lived in the area for thousands of years. Nowadays, the city is a bustling cosmopolitan town, still with its ancient University, but home also to a growing hi-tech community. Many businesses are located in and around the town, whether on one of the Science and Business Parks or within one of a number of residential areas.

The origins of Oxford are not actually known with any certainty, being as they are, shrouded in the mists of time, but various ideas have been submitted (and disputed) regarding its genealogy. Medieval historian, John Rous wrote in his 1490 work, “Historium Regum Angliae”, that Oxford was originally King Mempricius' city, Caer-Memre, built on the River Thames somewhere between 1400 and 1500 BC. However, other historians from Rous' time were more inclined to support the popular legend that Oxford was in fact founded by the Trojans, after they landed on British soil in around 1100 BC.


View towards Magdalen

Although the town of Oxford itself supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War, the powerful University was staunchly Royalist and, as a result, the city served as a home base for King Charles during the period. Specifically, the University housed King Charles at Christ Church College between 1642 and 1646, while Queen Henrietta Maria stayed at Merton.

Firmly established as an academic centre by the 13th century, Oxford was drawing students from across Europe for studies focused on houses established by the Dominicans (1221), Franciscans (1224), Carmelites (1256), and Augustinians (1267). History records a rocky relationship between the city of Oxford and the University of Oxford. Resentment towards the University on the city's part stemming, not least, from the scholars' legal precedence over the town. Until the 20th century the Chancellor of the University had the legal right to trial over townsfolk, and it was only in 1974 that the university lost the right to place its own representatives on the Oxford City Council. In fact, the 'Town and Gown' of Oxford have experienced a rather violent past with one of the most infamous outbreaks of rioting happening on St. Scholastrica's Day (February 10) in 1354.


Christchurch Cloisters


Merton Lane

Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and lays claim to nine centuries of continuous existence. As an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research, Oxford attracts students and scholars from across the globe, with almost a quarter of the students from overseas. More than 130 nationalities are represented among a student population of over 18,000. Oxford is a collegiate university, with 39 self-governing colleges related to the University in a type of federal system. There are also seven Permanent Private Halls, founded by different Christian denominations. Thirty colleges and all halls admit students for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Seven other colleges are for graduates only; one has Fellows only, and one specializes in part-time and continuing education.


Oxford; Colleges & Halls

The early seats of learning were monastic foundations and it is this monastic model which is so effectively reflected in the layout and operations of the colleges today which have cloisters, a chapel and a dining hall and college gardens or water meadows by the Thames (called the Isis where it flows through Oxford) or the Cherwell. What is also confusing for visitors is that the colleges don’t look like campuses elsewhere. In Oxford or Cambridge the teaching method is not the same as at other universities with few lecture halls. Rather students are taught in small tutorial groups or one to one by tutors in their rooms. Also students can attend tutorials or use facilities at several colleges not just their own. It is the uniqueness of this teaching method, the size and tradition of the academic community, the great resources and facilities available which makes an education at Oxford (and Cambridge) so special and so prized in the academic world. So now let us embark on the ROT!

For the ROT I’m going to restrict your tour to a large and small college, Magdalen and Brasenose and the centre of the University area but you could just as well take other colleges (Christchurch and Balliol) and do a similar tour. To do this tour if you are travelling by car you come into Oxford on the A420 which leads to the M40 Motorway and London. Park in the Park & Ride on the outskirts or before coming to Magdalen Bridge and its roundabout, park in the Council “pay and display” car park signposted on the right. Now take a gentle stroll towards the centre across the Cherwell on Magdalen Bridge into High Street. Ahead of you on the right you will see the tower and buildings of Magdalen College, on the left the Oxford Botanic Gardens and as you cross over the Cherwell you will see a boathouse with punts for hire.




Punts on the Cherwell

Magdalen College (pronounced 'Maudlin') has a reputation as one of Oxford's most beautiful colleges, and rightly so. The famous Great Tower (by William Reynolds) stands sentinel beside Magdalen Bridge and inside the college you will find peaceful cloister gardens, riverside walks and a deer park where a herd of fallow deer has been kept for over 300 years. Each year on 1st May, Magdalen is the scene of the beginning of Oxford's traditional May Morning celebrations. Crowds gather on Magdalen Bridge to welcome in the spring and, at 6am sharp, Magdalen Choristers sing madrigals to the hushed crowds below.


Magdalen Tower

Make sure to go into the College (An admission fee is payable) and follow the guide to see the chapel, dining hall, cloisters and the delightful deerpark and gardens at the back of the college. There is also a pleasant well run snack bar (called a Buttery in Oxford) by the river where you can watch the punts go by. The River Cherwell reaches the northern outskirts of Oxford and runs south on the eastern edge of north Oxford town centre. Near Summertown it passes the Victoria Arms (or "Vicky Arms"), a popular riverside pub at Marston and then under a modern bridge that is part of Marston Ferry Road. A little further south, the Cherwell passes Wolfson College (a graduate college of Oxford University), the Cherwell Boathouse (where punts can be hired) and the playing fields of the Dragon School. Next is Lady Margaret Hall, one of the previously all-women's Oxford colleges.


Magdalen College Chapel


Magdalen Cloisters

The river is then flanked by University Parks and passes under Rainbow Bridge. Parson's Pleasure and Dame's Delight used to provide nude bathing facilities for male and female bathers respectively, but both are now defunct. Below the Parks, the river splits into up to three streams, with a series of islands. One is Mesopotamia, which is a long thin island just south of the Parks with a path that provides a pleasant walk. At the northern end, there are punt rollers next to a weir. St Catherine's College is on the largest island formed by the split of the river. It also flows past Magdalen College.


Punting on the Cherwell

The river conjoins again into two streams close together to flow under Magdalen Bridge. The river splits again past the bridge. To the west is the Oxford Botanic Garden. The river then skirts Christ Church Meadow before flowing into the River Thames (or Isis) through two branches. On the island in between these branches are many of the college boathouses for rowing on the Thames. In summer, punting is very popular on the Oxford stretch of the Cherwell. (A punt is a long flat bottom boat which is propelled by means of a pole pushed against the river bed.) Punts are typically hired from a punt station by Magdalen Bridge or the Cherwell Boathouse (just to the north of the University Parks). It is possible to punt all the way from the Isis, north past the University Parks, and out beyond the ring road.

After Magdalen continue up the High Street and turn right through a pedestrian lane into Radcliffe Square. Radcliffe Square lies at the very heart of the old University. The round building in the centre is the Radcliffe Camera which was funded from the estate of the Royal Surgeon Dr John Radcliffe. The building was designed by James Gibbs and was completed in 1749. Originally conceived as a library of science and medicine, it is now part of the Bodleian Library and houses a collection on History and English Literature.

One of the best views of Oxford, All Souls and the Radcliffe Camera in particular, can be obtained from the top of the University Church of St Mary's spire. The University Church has been in existence since the late 13th century. In the early days of the University, the Church was a centre of administration and teaching, with the side chapels acting as lecture theatres where students studied mainly Theology. In 1556, it hosted the trial of the protestant Bishops Ridley, Cranmer and Latimer. The “Oxford Martyrs” where subsequently burnt at the stake for heresy by the Catholic Queen of England, Mary Tudor known to history as Bloody Mary. The Church is open every day and visitors can climb up the 127 stairs to the top of the spire to get another classic aerial view of Radcliffe Square and the spires of Oxford. Entrance to the church and spire is via Radcliffe Square. Surprisingly, Oxford is not well endowed with good restaurants but there is an excellent and good value Café in the cellar of St. Mary’s Church which uses organic local produce and has good loos. From the top of St Mary’s looking out over Radcliffe Square you have All Souls College on your right and the next one we are going to visit Brasenose on your left.


St. Mary the Virgin

The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford, was founded by Henry VI and Henry Chichele (fellow of New College and Archbishop of Canterbury), on 20 May 1438. The Statutes provided for the Warden and forty fellows - all to take Holy Orders; twenty-four to study arts, philosophy and theology; and sixteen to study civil or canon law. Today the College is primarily an academic research institution at the University of Oxford, having strong ties to the public domain. Traditionally, there are no undergraduate members.


All Souls from St. Mary's

When you come down from St. Mary’s go to your left into one of the smaller colleges, Brasenose. The name of the College has always fascinated visitors to Oxford, and there have been several interpretations of it. The most likely is that it refers to a “brazen” (brass or bronze) door knocker in the shape of a nose. In the 1330s there was a migration of rebellious students from Oxford to Stamford in Lincolnshire, and one of the ringleaders was from Brasenose Hall. In due course the rebellion was suppressed, the king ordering the students to return to Oxford. In 1890 a house in Stamford was offered for sale; it was called “Brasenose”, and had an ancient door knocker, dated to the twelfth century. Brasenose College purchased the house for the sake of that door knocker, which was brought to Oxford and now hangs over the high table in Brasenose Hall. The College historians of the 1890s were convinced that the fourteenth century students of Brasenose Hall took the knocker from which they derived their name to Stamford, and that it had been restored to its rightful home at last.


Brasenose

Noses have been used as symbols for Brasenose College throughout its history. More than one has been placed over the main door and they can be found in the glass in Hall. The Archives have a carved nose once attached to the College Eight, a nose tie pin of the 1870s, and one of the nose pipes sold by a local tobacconist and smoked by Brasenose undergraduates in the years before the First World War. For a small college it has had many famous graduates ranging from Archbishops of Canterbury to Michael Palin. Leaving Brasenose turn left past the Radcliffe Camera towards Broad Street and you will come to the Bodleian Library and Sheldonian Theatre and pass the Bridge of Sighs.


Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford. It is also a copyright deposit library and its collections are used by scholars from around the world. The buildings within the central site include Duke Humfrey's Library above the Divinity School, the Old Schools Quadrangle with its Great Gate and Tower, the Radcliffe Camera, Britain’s first circular library, and the Clarendon Building. In addition, the Bodleian consists of nine other libraries, in separate locations in Oxford: the Bodleian Japanese Library, the Bodleian Law Library, the Hooke Library, the Indian Institute Library, the Oriental Institute Library, the Philosophy Library, the Radcliffe Science Library, the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House and the Vere Harmsworth Library.

On your right you will see The Bridge of Sighs which joins the two sections of Hertford College located on either side of New College Lane. Modeled on the famous Ponte dei Sospiri in Venice, it has become one of Oxford's most photographed buildings and is well known from “Inspector Morse” and other programmes and films. But its construction was vehemently opposed when it was built in 1913, not least by the Fellows of New College who thought it would spoil the views of their college from the Sheldonian Theatre. The original bridge in Venice gets its name from the sighs of the prisoners being led to their execution.


The Bridge of Sighs

The Sheldonian Theatre is the centre for University ceremonials and another creation of Sir Christopher Wren. This is well worth a visit, not just to see the Vice Chancellor's elaborately carved throne and painted ceiling, but also to take in the spectacular aerial views of Oxford's spires and domes from the rooftop cupola. The Broad Street entrance to the Sheldonian Theatre is notable because of the carved heads, or terms, that tower above the railings. Often referred to as the twelve Caesars or Apostles, they are actually anonymous but, nonetheless, curiously photogenic!


Sheldonian Theatre


Ashmolean Museum

Now walk past the Sheldonian and Blackwell’s famous University bookshop on Broad Street and turn right into St Giles at the top where it meets Cornmarket. Here you will see the Monument of the English Martyrs in St Giles. This is near the spot where the Protestant Bishops Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer (the Oxford Martyrs) were burned at the stake in 1555 and 1556 by Catholic Queen Mary. Head up St. Giles for 200 metres past the Randolph Hotel and the Ashmolean Museum on your left and Balliol and Keble Colleges on your right until on your left past St. Cross College you will come to your final destination with the promise of a traditional Morrel’s ale in the back room of the pub everybody in Oxford knows as the Bird and Baby but which the sign over the door actually calls the “Eagle and Child”!


JRR Tolkien

CS Lewis

Charles Williams
This building dates from the sixteenth century and is Grade II listed. It is popularly known as the “Bird & the Baby”, and has been a pub since 1650. Wellington Place runs along the north side of the building, and Eagle & Child Passage runs through the pub itself on the south side. From the 1930s to the 1960s the Inklings (including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien) met in the “Rabbit Room” at the back of this pub. The Inklings were a gathering of friends -- all of them British, male, and Christian, most of them teachers at or otherwise affiliated with Oxford University, many of them creative writers and lovers of imaginative literature -- who met usually on Thursday evenings in C.S. Lewis's and J.R.R. Tolkien's college rooms in Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s for readings and criticism of their own work, and for general conversation. "Properly speaking," wrote W.H. Lewis, one of their number, the Inklings "was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections."


An overlapping group gathered on Tuesday (later Monday) mornings in various Oxford pubs, usually but not always the Eagle and Child, better known as the Bird and Baby, between the 1940s and 1963. These were not strictly Inklings meetings, and contrary to popular legend the Inklings did not read their manuscripts in the pub. What they have left behind are some of the most enduring works of 20th Century English literature including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Chronicles of Narnia, War in Heaven, Many Dimensions, and Descent into Hell and Mere Christianity.


Inklings Snug - the “Rabbit Room”


Bird and Baby

To get an idea of the Oxford of the ‘50s and the world of the “Inklings”, watch the excellent movie “Shadowlands” where Anthony Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis. But also make sure you have a drink in the back room surrounded by their memorabilia and photos. For you have earned your drink having completed the ROT in such good style! If you are staying longer in Oxford there is much more to see; many more wonderful colleges, numerous museums and art galleries including the Ashmolean, Oxford and Pitts Rivers museums, excellent shopping, the covered market, the Oxford Canal and the riverside and water meadow walks and the rich theatrical, musical and cultural life of the town in the evenings. But whether you are staying or moving on I hope you will feel that the ROT has given you an insight into a town of dreaming spires and magnificent warm sandstone buildings which is rather special and rather wonderful



See also;

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/oxfords-ashmolean-museum.htmll

Oxford Rambles

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/05/oxford-rambles.html

Pitt Rivers Museum

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/09/pitt-rivers-museum-oxford.html



Location: Oxfordshire, England


Oxford Canal

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