Oxford Rituals

Come exam weeks , you’ll see students in academic gowns treading cobblestones past ivory towers. It doesn’t feel like Oxford has changed in centuries until you look closer.

Undergraduates read (ie study) only one subject, with the exception of some new hybrids like PPE (politics, philosophy and economics.) There are qualifying exams at the end of the first year and weekly tutorial papers. However, the only thing that counts towards the final degree are the exams sat at the end of 3 years in 10 subfields.

If that weren’t enough pressure, the students are required to wear 19th century kit known as subfusc for exams. Young men must wear: a white bow tie, shirt, black suit and black shoes under an academic gown. Young women substitute a black tie and can wear either a black skirt or trousers. Don’t say “pants”- that’s underpants in British! On hot days they can at least sit the exam in their shirt sleeves.

A more recent custom is to don a carnation on the lapel. On the first day of exams, which can last 10 days, the flower is virginal white. During the middle days it is pink. On the final day the carnation is red, as if it had been soaking in a red inkwell, slowly reaching saturation, not unlike the student.

Not everyone is on the same examination schedule, so lunchtime in hall is an amusing clash of period dress. At Oriel there were lads in their sports kit elbow to elbow with suited chums. Gowns were hung on pegs to keep tidy. The lunch food was institutional. I had mystery meat on a skewer. Fish? Chicken? Pork? Quite unlike a high table feast. No one seemed to mind as they ate heartily after morning exertions.

Most exams are sat at Examination Schools in silent, cavernous rooms. I could feel the tension in the air when I peeked my head in on my way to a history lecture. It’s a grand 19th century sandstone building with an enormous two story foyer. The halls sport black and white checkered floors and colorful walls leading to stone steps. The whimsical feeling is misleading.

These third year exams count for everything and are administered by the university, not the separate colleges. Very few students graduate with a First Degree. Most get a Second, and the worst get a Third or fail. There are nicknames. A Lower Second (2-2) is called a “Bishop Desmond.” A Third is called a "Richard."

The joking spins out of control after the final exam. A student’s mates greets him/her with balloons, silly hats and necklaces as they exit. They are covered in treacle so that tossed flour will stick to their gowns. A plate of pastry cream or shaving cream is shoved in the face. Traditionally the student was sprayed with champagne, but the police have been cracking down on that. I still spotted students chugging champagne bottles on side streets.

This elaborate Oxford ritual is called “trashing.” Plenty of drinking and celebration follows at the pub or in the dorm rooms.

Out punting on a Saturday, I spotted a trashed student in his filthy gowns by the river. At the urging from his bank-side mates and more students in a punt, the lad dove in and swam out for a glass of wine. He was offered the entire bottle but declined in a posh accent, “Christ Church ball tonight.”

Every other year the colleges hold a Commemoration Ball, a white tie affair that starts in the evening for dinner and lasts all night. At dawn there is a violin serenade with champagne and a greasy full English breakfast in hall.

I went to a similar ball at Cambridge University back when my sister-in-law was there. We ladies wore floor length ball gowns and danced all night under the stars. Well, we didn’t actually see the stars, but they must have been there twinkling over the dense fog.

The final ritual is Oxford’s graduation ceremony held in the Sheldonian Theatre, designed by Christopher Wren. It’s too small to fit everyone, so the students graduate on separate days. I attended the honorary degree ceremony, called Encaenia, meaning "festival of renewal" in Greek. A bit of a misnomer as most of the ceremony was conducted in Latin!


The ceremony opened with a trumpet fanfare, and then black robed officials with white hair and long silver staffs escourted the honorands inside. The University Chancellor sat upon that golden throne conferring degrees.

The ancient language could not keep up with modern times. The introductory speech for Sheila Evans Widnall, former US Secretary of the Air Force, waxed poetic about Icarus and such.

The only honorand I recognized was Thomas Nagel, a philosopher of mind who once asked “What is it like to be a bat?” Thanks to a translation sheet, I now know how to say bat in Latin: vespertilio.

Another Encaenia ritual was to thank (in English) the donors – that was dull! The speaker livened up his speech with jibes against rival Cambridge University, the “daughter school.” Then all the dons in their academic gown processed outside into the rain.

I enjoyed seeing the Encaenia spectacle but was sorry to miss fellow Oxford blogger John Kelly give a new media presentation at Reuters. Since I couldn’t be two places at once, my husband, Henry, will take over the blog from here. Our daughter snapped this photo of the Kelly family before they flew home to Washington D.C.

One of the real delights of this year has been getting to know the Kelly family. John is a columnist at The Washington Post who spent the past year as a Fellow of The Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism researching the red-hot topic of citizen journalism. He presented his findings last week.

Citizen journalism hit the front-pages (oh, the post-modern irony of that phrase!) in the aftermath of 9/11, the Tsunami, and the 7/7 bombings. Nifty new technologies like mobile phone cameras and wireless broadband mean that just about anyone can be a reporter, by-passing “old media” journalists who are, John reports, less trusted than even estate agents. User-generated content (UGC), wikipedia, youtube and blogs have created powerful new networks which have turned upside-down the old relationship between reporter and audience.

That’s good news if you think the old media are a complacent elite delivering patronising lectures - isn’t it better to choose what you want at the buffet than have some snooty waiter decide for you? A citizen journalist broke the story of Obama’s “bitter” comment, and bloggers spread the word, leaving the old gatekeepers flat-footed.

On the other hand, many fret about the erosion of the old journalistic values of professionalism, objectivity, and fact-checking. Instead of a vibrant cyber-democracy, these folk see a cacophony of ill-informed opinion - a view hilariously captured in this Mitchell and Webb spoof of the the BBC’s "Have Your Say" fixation.



John steered a helpful middle course between these extremes, holding onto the hope that we can figure out a way to get the best of both worlds. He noted that the same technology that allows every Tom, Dick or Harriet to post something bogus also allows anyone to correct it in real time. “Check, then publish” is a good old-media rule, but “publish, then check” has its merits in a networked world.

In any case, the evidence is that most citizens don’t actually want to be journalists - less than 1% of the BBC’s on-line traffic is UGC-related. We’ll always need objective, contextualized reporting and informed analysis. Journalists who can deliver this AND who are savvy to the latest media will be in high demand. Journalists, in short, like John.

We miss you and your family already, John. Keep blogging back in the USA!

May Day in Oxford

I awoke at 4:00 am to see dawn on May Day, but the Oxford students had been reveling all night long. The police requested that the students refrain from jumping off Magdalen Bridge into the Cherwell River after previous years’ injuries. Try reasoning with a lemming. I heard of a couple that got engaged in mid-jump. Honestly! Can you imagine how much drink was involved?

May Day is a pagan celebration, and yet there are Christian overtones. Or should I say over-tunes? After six bell chimes, choristers sang in the sunrise from Magdalen Tower. Crowds of drunken students and sleepy townspeople tilted up their heads to hear the Latin hymn. The young boys’ voices were truly angelic. Over the tower a small patch of blue sky dissolved dark clouds. But for a few cheers and loose balloons, the crowd stood still in silent awe. The Magdalen Boys Choir then sang Sumer is Icumen In. The minister spoke a few words about Mary Magdalen, the college’s namesake, and welcomed spring.

The many gargoyles of Magdalen College leered down at the less than reverent crowd.


Inebriated students in tuxedos with lost bow ties lounged upon the street as their micro-mini skirted girlfriends shivered, lurched and giggled. A Scottish gentleman in a dinner jacket, white tie and a kilt gave his stiletto-ed lady a piggyback ride. Others had painted their faces or hair in fluorescent hues. I looked for traditional Morris dancers and was impressed by this modern take:

There were live bands playing along High Street:

In Radcliffe Square Scottish country dancers spun in kilts and long skirts before a bagpipe player:

Another Scotsman welcomed spring with not so fresh air before St. Mary’s Church:
Vault & Gardens inside the church was serving a hot cooked breakfast from 5:45 am, but the queue (line) was too long to join. Many cafes and pubs had been open most of the night.

On New College Lane before the Bridge of Sighs, groups of Morris Dancers cracked sticks, stamped clogs and jingled bells to accordion players.

Dawn’s early light made the sandstone buildings glow pinkish gold.

A tree man watched. Must be a druid thing. Note the pink haired lady and the cheese-headed accordion player behind him. At least I think it was a he. It’s hard to sex a tree. Green families gathered on the steps of the 18th century Clarendon Building.

Despite the forecast for heavy rain, not a drop fell. The rites of spring must have worked!

May Day is also peak bluebell time in England. The hovering purple-blue mist could make a curmudgeon believe in fairies.

Best place to see these lovely woodland flowers is on National Trust Land. The Holies in Berkshire overlooks the beautiful Thames Valley.

Fluorescent yellow grouse and fields of rape provide the perfect compliment. England can be relentlessly grey and green so to see such rich color is pure joy.


May also heralds World Press Freedom Day. At The Reuter’s Institute my husband, Henry Laurence, gave a brilliant talk on political censorship of public television. In a related article Henry revealed how the Japanese government altered NHK documentary coverage of the comfort women (WWII sex slaves) and how the Bush Administration censored PBS children’s programming.

The British BBC is by far the most progressive public broadcaster, although not free of incidents of self-censorship. Henry referred to the phenomenon as “the pre-emptive cringe.” Expect a really interesting book to come out of two sabbaticals of research in Japan, the UK and the USA. It is fascinating and provocative material, but you don’t have to take my word on it.

Washington Post journalist John Kelly blogged about Henry’s talk. John Kelly’s Voxford is one of my favorite blogs; it’s topical, controversial and often very funny. Fridays feature the gargoyle of the week. Like us, the Kelly family is on sabbatical from the USA. John refers to England as the land of warm beer and cold loos (bathrooms,) but he clearly loves it.

Another new friend from this sabbatical year is women’s fiction author Miranda Glover. She’s in my writers’ group. Miranda’s second novel, Soulmates, just came out last week. Soulmates is about sisters, daughters and the sad havoc of depression. From trendy London to the cold beauty of Stockholm, it’s a captivating read in a soothing voice, rich in detail. I’ve only just started and look forward to reading more tonight.

I’m cross with the characters in the new novel I'm writing. They’re not even out of the prologue and already they are waking me before dawn for adventures. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation or the amount of work left to do for this English novel, but I can’t believe it is already May!

Oxford Literary Festival 2008

It was not without irony that Lionel Shriver announced that she would be the first to read “smut” aloud in Christ Church Library. At The Oxford Literary Festival Shriver read two sexually explicit but intellectually charged passages from her latest novel, The Post-Birthday World. Shriver takes a bold stab at what people really think about when making love. As she said, there is a limit to the number of physical combinations of which part goes where. Lionel didn’t blush once, her enunciation was as faultless and subtly nuanced as the most seasoned actress. The stage was set with leather-bound books housed in oak below ornate moldings, an ivory tower out the window.


It made me want to go back and reread her book; I blogged about PBW last May. A review in the Guardian (spoiler alert) claimed this work was her most autobiographical. Shriver left a long term relationship for the love of a jazz musician. Like her heroine and like me, Shriver is an expat American living in England. We were both dressed in black t-shirts and jeans, unlike anyone else in the silver-haired, tweedy audience. I confess to feeling comfort at hearing an American accent again, like finding an old friend.

The PBW has been called chick lit although it tackles deep issues such as the inspiration for creativity and even the conflict in Northern Ireland. It is still quite a change from the disturbing We Need to Talk About Kevin. Her Orange Prize winner was about a school shooter. A hand count showed that I was one of the few that had read her latest; most were Kevin fans and women.

I asked how she managed to defy genre typing and what her next project would be. Shriver was wary of “the women’s fiction pigeon hole” as she cherishes her male readers too. Her claim was that women read more books then men and are just as happy to read broadly. She did admit that her agent was nervous about her next novel: a reflection on the American healthcare system written in a male voice. As long as Shriver continues to write beautifully and honestly about controversial subjects, I believe her audience will only grow.

The Oxford Literary Festival lasts an entire week and is housed in Christ Church which many may recognize from Brideshead Revisited. The events were well worth the £7.50 admission just for the venue alone. I attended one where I sat at high table in Hall. If the space looks familiar, it was the model for the Hogwart’s dining hall in Harry Potter.

Even the entrance to the Hall and other conference rooms was beyond grand.

Of course nothing at the venerable college was accessible, so the panel I attended on "Disability in Writing" was housed across the street. The chair was the academic Tom Shakespeare. Susan Clow, manager of In the Picture spoke first about the importance of including disabled children in mainstream children’s picture books. It’s a more representational vision of reality, and inclusion sends the important message that the disabled are not invisible. Her website has many good tips for illustrators.

Susan Clow, Tom Shakespeare, Mark Haddon and Lois Keith

Novelist Lois Keith listed 3 approaches to avoid when writing about the disabled:

1. “I wouldn’t wish disability on my worst enemy.”
2. “He threw his wheelchair out the window to walk again.” (eg Colin in The Secret Garden)
3. "Show the disabled character watching passively in the corner." (eg sweet Beth in Little Women)

The main draw of the panel was author Mark Haddon. A sharp-eyed reader will note that the chapters in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time are all in prime numbers. Not once in the narrative is it spelled out that the engaging narrator with a number fixation has Asperger’s Syndrome. Haddon’s only regret was that the publisher added that information to the jacket blurb. His novel invites you to see the world through autistic eyes, but it is not a book about disability per se.

The Curious Incident is one of the best young adult books I’ve read; my son at age twelve loved it too. Encouraged by Haddon, I have included a disabled character in my novel S.A.D..

I attended the panel on Japanese Historical Fiction just for fun. I’ve always enjoyed reading novels about Japan. One of my favorite authors is Haruki Murakami. My husband teaches Japanese Politics, and my sister-in-law is Japanese.

Ellis Avery was worried that a 21st century American couldn’t understand what it felt like to be a 19th century Japanese girl. I applaud her choice of narrator: an American orphan, adopted by a Japanese family as a servant. The Teahouse Fire is as beautifully choreographed and unrushed as a tea ceremony. What drives the narrative is the complex relationship between the fictional maid, Aurelia, and a real historical figure, her mistress. Shin Yukako rescued the tea ceremony from obscurity in a rapidly modernizing Meiji Japan, just opening to the west.

What is striking about Avery’s story is that it reads like a Japanese novel. It reminds me of Mori Ogai’s The Wild Geese which is set in the same time period and is one my favorite novels. In both we see the attention to detail, the importance of family tradition, the theme of unrequited love and even the slow pace. What enlivens the narrative in Teahouse is a distinctly American feminist perspective, including a lesbian romance. It’s an unusual mix, but it works. I’m missing her voice since finishing the book.

I don’t have as much to say about Lesley Downer’s The Last Concubine because I haven’t read it. Like Avery's novel, it is set in 19th century Japan. Although Downer lived in Japan for 15 years, the only Japanese women she said she could relate to were geisha. She characterized the rest as married at 24, had kids, were gossipy, didn’t know men (even their husbands) and didn’t work. That isn’t the Japan that I know.

At the end of the readings, Avery delighted the audience by passing out Japanese sweets and conducting a tea ceremony. Avery has studied the art of Japanese tea for years. She held her arms as if wearing a kimono and moved with measured grace. Downer was an obliging guest, her role as ritualized.

On Avery’s website I discovered that we share the same literary agent, Jean Naggar. I introduced myself to Avery and her partner, Sharon Marcus; both teach at Columbia University. Oddly enough, they already knew me. They had googled “best tea in Oxford,” found my blog and enjoyed a decent cup of tea and lunch at The Rose. Professor Marcus studies 19th century women journals and said my blog reminded her of the travel journals from that time. Isn’t cyberspace a small world?

Another panel I attended was “Blogging the Classics” which debated book review blogging vs. newspaper literary criticism.

John Carey, John Mullan, Lynne Hatwell and Mark Thwaite

Mark Thwaite, founder of ReadySteadyBook.com and a librarian by profession, spoke on the value of book blogging as giving recognition to good but unusual titles. He listed 7 words that should be avoided when reviewing:

1. poignant
2. compelling
3. intriguing
4. astute
5. craft
6. muse
7. lyrical

Uh oh, have I used them all? Thwaite posts a list of about 80 English book bloggers on his website at BritLitBlogs. Too bad there isn’t an American equivalent of this directory. Thwaite pointed out that there are a lot of blogs out there - well over 100 million tracked by Technorati alone. Diversity is a given.

Lynne Hatwell from dovegreyreader was an engaging speaker: modest, funny and forthright. Blogging about books is the way to share her passion. Her blog is a bit like mine, a mixture of reading and personal narrative. It’s more about how she feels about the books than a critical review. She lives in Devon and is a healthcare visitor who did a literature degree in her free time.

The panel’s literary critic was Professor John Mullan. Mullan said his academic training allows him to understand literature better than a layperson. He may know books, but it didn’t sound like the professor was that familiar with blogs. He spoke of people raving, hostility and chaos in cyberspace. The moderator and Sunday Times chief reviewer, John Carey praised the diversity in blogging, but Mullan didn’t recognize its value beyond entertainment.

Near the close of the festival, came the biggest surprise: 3 inches of snow! My kids made a snowman with grape hyacinth hair. Port Meadow looked like a holiday card complete with swans. I felt like I had conjured the storm as I was writing a new cross-country skiing scene for S.A.D. and was having a hard time remembering a Maine winter. I actually got the idea under a flurry of cherry blossoms. My revisions are well inspired thanks to the literary festival and the April snow.

Americans in Oxford

Are they marketing to expats in Oxford or Americanophiles?

I feel more American living abroad. It happens every time I open my mouth. It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing a battered Barbour and muddy wellies or even that my husband is English. My accent declares that I’m not British.

We Americans grow up with a sense of England from watching Masterpiece Theater on public television. We expect Oxford to be just like Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, forgetting that it’s fiction and from another era.

In the two decades I have visited and occasionally lived in England, I’ve seen a great deal of convergence between our countries. There was the spread of first McDonalds and the GAP and now Starbucks etc. I wouldn’t call this a good trend, but my kids appreciate the super-sized “American cookies” (instead of “biscuits”) at train stations. A "coffee Americana" in Europe is what we could call "coffee black."

I am happy to find bagels in the supermarkets now even if they taste more like bread. My first homesick year living in London (1980’s) I actually called the American Embassy to ask where to buy bagels. They didn’t know. My fiancé found them in Leicester Square, and later I discovered a Jewish area in Brick Lane.

My notion of England must sound warped to British ears, and British concepts of America sound just as funny to me. In the very English department store Debenhams I found this display of “Maine New England” clothing. Where can I start? I have never seen landscape like that in my home state. I’m guessing the photo was shot in Cornwall, not in Maine. The pink-red shirt color is native to New England, but it’s called "Nantucket Red." It’s popular with sailors and preppies on an island in Massachusetts. Button-down, short sleeve shirts are much more prevalent in England than in the USA.

One advantage of living abroad during an election year is to have a filter from all the frenzy. I check the primary results in The New York Times on line and see the race covered by the English media. I’ve been less than impressed. Mary Dejevsky’s commentary in The Independent was typical of the English coverage, and I’m sure there are American equivalents. Too many articles focus on race vs. gender when discussing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Of course that is a key issue, but I find it demeaning to the candidates to reduce them to inherited characteristics.

There are clear policy differences between Clinton and Obama. Living under the National Health in England is bliss: no insurance forms or co-pays and everyone is covered. I can admire Clinton for wanting that for our nation. Then there’s the war. The British are very concerned about the War in Iraq, and yet they seem unaware that Obama has opposed the war since day one, without waffling, whereas Clinton voted for it before doing an about face.

Obama is a fascinating candidate for reasons that go beyond race. I’m reading his incredibly well written memoir Dreams of My Father. I found it prominently displayed at Paddington Train Station. The most compelling article I’ve read on Obama was by Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic Monthly. Sullivan is British and Oxford educated but lives in the USA. If you read only one article about Obama, read that one to understand the political culture and the meaning of his candidacy. You can buy American magazines in England, but they cost as much as books. This one was worth it.

Walking through Oxford, I found this sign in a dorm room window. I’m guessing there’s a Rhodes or Marshall scholar in residence. President Bill Clinton was one himself, but I haven’t seen any Clinton signs for his wife. Ironically, I believe this window is at Univ, Bill’s college at Oxford.

Another memoir I’m reading is Rosa Ehrenreich’s A Garden of Paper Flowers about her time as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford. I can’t say I’m enjoying it. It’s a very subjective and whiny account that plays to stereotype: the American can’t fit in with the rigid, class-bound Brits. Her naivety is almost humorous. She chose Christ Church and then complains that it was too upper class and religious, when even a spot of research could have told her that.

Ehrenreich finds fault in the Oxford system compared to Harvard without realizing that she’s comparing undergraduate education to a graduate program. Of course graduate education in political science is going to be more theoretical, narrow and full of jargon. It’s a big part of the reason why I left academia myself.

It is much more fun being an undergraduate, especially in the American system. I took elective courses in music, forestry, literature and art history while studying politics. English students enjoy their undergraduate years too. Like Ehrenreich, my husband had fun rowing, but he also received a first rate education at Oxford and then at Harvard. Henry appreciated both despite their differences.

Ehrenreich does do a good job describing what it feels like being a confused ex-pat American at Oxford. Her personal reactions will help guide character development in my third novel. I’ve also talked to my cousin Peter Nohrnberg, who was another Marshall Scholar but at Magdalen College. I have 3 American friends who very much enjoyed their junior year at Oxford.

I studied abroad during my junior year too but at King’s College London. Last time I lived in England (2004), my husband was leading Colby-Bowdoin-Bates semester in London for Maine college students. This academic year Henry is doing a research fellowship at Oxford for his sabbatical while I'm researching my third novel. NOT CRICKET places an American student at Oxford in the 1980’s and now.

The true experience probably falls somewhere between my good years and Ehrenreich’s misery. If there is misery, I’d like to find the humor in it as well. There is nothing like living abroad to give insight on a foreign culture but also on one’s own. We see ourselves in another’s eyes better than by looking in a mirror.

If you know of other books (fact or fiction) about Americans at Oxford, please comment below. I’d also love to hear some personal accounts. You can comment anonymously.

In case you were worried after my last post, the flood waters have receded. The sun has been shining for days! The crocuses are blooming through the muck, but there's snow/rain in the forecast. It's just like late mud season in Maine. Doesn’t this photo (click image to expand) look like an oil painting? It’s the digital zoom and the winter light.

Set on Magdalen College

I fell in love with Magdalen College as a teenager visiting England. It seemed a coded language that the pronunciation was Maud-lin. I loved animals, and here was “the college with the deer.” What a surprise to step off the bike-congested Oxford streets into rural countryside. Like a secret garden, thick walls keep the dull roar of traffic at bay. Deer graze in the meadow and quiet paths meander through the woods. Canals are ideal for romantic boating.

After watching Brideshead Revisted on PBS, I dreamed of going to Oxford University. Instead I did a junior semester abroad at King’s College, London. My lucky cousin, Peter Nohrnberg, did a Marshall Scholarship at Magdalen. He enjoyed reading poetry in such a bucolic setting. He told tales of towing a bottle of champagne by a string while punting to keep it cool.

I retuned to Magdalen for my friends’ wedding. Stewart Wood and my husband had bonded over being two Oxford Brits at Harvard and falling in love with women raised in Manhattan. Stewart took a position teaching politics at Magdalen so the lovely, candle-lit chapel was the obvious place for the small ceremony.

After the service, we walked enchanted through the quad of cloisters and dined in hall. The dark paneled, high-vaulted space felt from a different era and it was. The college was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester.

Magdalen sees less of Stewart now as he is on leave advising the Prime Minister. Stewart is Gordan Brown's senior policy advisor on foreign policy, Northern Ireland, culture, media and sport. He's also my advisor on Magdalen.

Henry and I met Stewart for a pint at the 14th century Turf Tavern hidden behind The Bridge of Sighs. Check out the visual directions for a laugh or if you have any desire of ever finding it. Contrast that to neon-signed American bars. The Turf was mentioned in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. I feel part of a literary tradition, living in Oxford as a writer.

Stewart told us of a centuries old tradition of shooting a deer for a feast when a Magdalen fellow passed away. The custom has recently changed so that they now order venison from the butcher. People these days don't like to know their dinner. I'm looking forward to more tales and a dinner at high table.

My husband revealed yet another personal tie to Magdalen if a sad one. Two of his grandfather’s cousins had attended the college and died serving in WWI. The Cattley brothers’ names were engraved in stone with other young Magdalen men lost to The Great War. The plaque is near the entrance to the chapel. It was so moving to see Henry’s ancestors and to feel a personal part of history.

When Henry and I had walked around the gardens, blooming in early fall splendor, the leaves were just starting to turn. It had felt too early in my year at Oxford to have chosen a setting for NOT CRICKET, and I may still create a fictional hybrid college for my novel.

On the other hand, Oxford has so much beauty and history that I don’t think I could improve upon it. The deer park would appeal to my native Maine character. One Magdalen alum was King Edward VIII, who fell in love with the divorced American Wallis Simpson and abidacted the throne to marry her. How perfect a setting for another Anglo-American romance.

I peeked into the Old Kitchen Bar, and I could see my characters gathered round a table with pints of amber bitter or golden lager. I’m guessing back in the 1980’s the students would have been served more than hot drinks.

Henry has stories of dons pouring sherry for morning tutorial. He seemed to have spent a lot of time down the boozer with his mates playing darts. Oxford University Guidlines now state that undergraduates should not be served alcohol before lunch!

I long to see inside a tutorial room and student lodgings to gather more details. Like character acting, I’m character writing. I will especially enjoy trawling more old pubs! They have such funny names. Now that’s another blog....