Oxford

This replica is better than the original: The Ivy Oxford Brasserie reviewed

24 October 2020 9:00 am

Oxford is not an easy city to homogenise; but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. I found a vast shopping…

The vaccine goalposts have shifted

8 September 2020 3:42 am

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock provided a vaccine update this morning London time, reporting that the chances of the Oxford…

Oxford skulduggery: The Sandpit, by Nicholas Shakespeare, reviewed

25 July 2020 9:00 am

Melancholy pervades this novel: a sense of glasses considerably more than half empty, with the levels sinking fast. This is…

What is a ‘tergiversation’?

11 January 2020 9:00 am

Last year, someone at US dictionary Merriam-Webster noticed that lots of people were looking up the word tergiversation online. It…

The lessons I learned at my Oxford gaudy

12 October 2019 9:00 am

I went to a gaudy last weekend. Several British universities now host these splendid events; mine was at Worcester College,…

It’s so easy to go mad in Oxford: Chiang Mai Kitchen reviewed

21 September 2019 9:00 am

Oxford is a pile of medieval buildings filled with maniacs, and is therefore one of the most interesting places on…

Stuffed doll in Edwardian-style black dress with stiletto through face, south Devon, England , 1909–13

The objects that sound witchiest on paper just look sad: Spellbound reviewed

27 October 2018 9:00 am

Just in front of me, visiting Spellbound at the Ashmolean last week, was a very rational boy of about seven…

The English clergy at their oddest – a compendium

29 September 2018 9:00 am

As the wordy title of this book and the name of its author suggest, this is a faux-archaic, fogeyish journey…

Our great universities are struggling – but not because of Brexit

12 May 2018 9:00 am

British universities have serious problems. The recent strikes protesting against a sudden reduction in pension rights were unusually effective, and…

We’re all poorer for the loss of our small rail lines

2 December 2017 9:00 am

To me, the strange words ‘Marsh Gibbon’ once meant I was nearly home. My heart lifted as we creaked and…

The Queen and Prince Philip’s 70th anniversary party sounds glorious

25 November 2017 9:00 am

Windsor Castle on Monday night sounds like a children’s party magnified. The rooms were filled with golden-leaved trees. A giant…

Gleaming pictures of the past

14 October 2017 9:00 am

If you think you know what to expect from an Alan Hollinghurst novel, then when it comes to The Sparsholt…

A poet in prose

7 October 2017 9:00 am

Literary reputation can be a fickle old business. Those garlanded during their lifetimes are often quickly forgotten once dead. Yet…

Tales out of school

7 October 2017 9:00 am

In 1952, the five-year-old Michael Rosen and his brother were taken on holiday along the Thames by their communist parents.…

Oxford’s spires mark a new beginning

Greater Oxbridge

2 September 2017 9:00 am

Oxbridge is an ivory-tower state of mind, perhaps, or at least two ancient rival universities, but how about this: in…

By Patten or design?

22 July 2017 9:00 am

My old friend Richard Ingrams was said always to write The Spectator’s television reviews sitting in the next-door room to…

Oxford is full of overindulged whiners. It wasn’t like that in my day

23 April 2016 9:00 am

I was in the attic killing some Taleban on Medal of Honor when Girl interrupted and said: ‘Dad, what’s this?’…

Brexit is none of Mark Carney's business

12 March 2016 9:00 am

Surely there is a difference between Mark Carney’s intervention in the Scottish referendum last year and in the EU one…

Why the next Tory leader is likely to be in the ‘Leave’ camp

13 February 2016 9:00 am

Here is a thought for all those Tory MPs calculating their personal advantage in the forthcoming EU referendum: unless the…

Moral sainthood is a bore; sinners are much more fun

13 February 2016 9:00 am

Gstaad I had the rather subversive idea of offering a six-figure sum to Oriel College, Oxford. On one condition: that…

Why must David Cameron insult Oxford, when it gave him so much?

6 February 2016 9:00 am

In 2000, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, accused Magdalen College, Oxford, of class bias in failing to…

‘Untitled (Oxidation Painting)’, 1978, by Andy Warhol

Warhol the traditionalist: the Ashmolean Museum show reviewed

6 February 2016 9:00 am

When asked the question ‘What is art?’, Andy Warhol gave a characteristically flip answer (‘Isn’t that a guy’s name?’). On…

Hilly, wife of Kingsley Amis, in Swansea

Larkin’s misty parks and moors — in all their lacerating beauty

12 December 2015 9:00 am

When Philip Larkin went up to St John’s College, Oxford, in the early 1940s, he found himself in a world…

Charles Williams: sadist or Rosicrucian saint?

14 November 2015 9:00 am

Charles Williams was a bad writer, but a very interesting one. Most famous bad writers have to settle, like Sidney…

‘I hope you don’t mind these letters that just go on and on’

Iris Murdoch’s letters just go on and on — as she herself was the first to admit

29 October 2015 9:00 am

Iris Murdoch’s emotionally hectic novels have been enjoying a comeback lately, with an excellent Radio 4 dramatisation of The Sea,…