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High-tech key to secrets of the past

9:09am Thursday 19th January 2012

Anyone with a computer can fly about in time these days like a butterfly in air. For instance, I clicked Listed Buildings in the vicinity of my home the other day — and came across a Royal Palace that had flourished from the time of King John (1167-1216) until as late as 1614, in which Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn, and Edward IV (1442-1483) probably first came across his future bride, Elizabeth Woodville, of which I had never before heard.

Marlborough's brave calm in the face of calamity

2:58pm Wednesday 11th January 2012

New year 1712 was not a happy one for the great Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), the commander of the allied forces against the French during the War of the Spanish Succession, and heroic victor of such momentous battles as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet. He started the year in real trouble.

Keeping alive ancient customs

2:18pm Friday 30th December 2011

Boars’ heads have been much on my mind, and not only because of that famous one served up at The Queen’s College, Oxford, during December.

Musical thoughts on a winter drive

1:14pm Wednesday 21st December 2011

Talk about bleak midwinter. Apart from the words of Christina Rosetti’s carol ringing in my head — as they must be for many people this week — I found myself in the middle of the real thing.

The career of Oxford-based Poet Laureate Thomas Warton

12:01pm Wednesday 14th December 2011

As Poet Laureate to George III, Dr Thomas Warton (1728-1729) had an unusual problem. He earned his bread — and wine too, as it happens — by writing odes to order in praise of his sovereign; then, all of a sudden, his sovereign went stark, staring mad. Luckily for him he was saved from embarrassment when the usual New Year’s Day court ceremonies were cancelled in 1789 — so no ode was needed; and six months later the king appeared to be completely recovered — so Dr Warton wrote a poem for his birthday on June 4 comparing his illness to a brief summer storm and rejoicing at how “the reddening Sun regains his golden sway”. Dr Warton — sometimes called Thomas Warton the younger to distinguish him from his father who, like him, was a Professor of Poetry at Oxford — became Poet Laureate in 1785 in succession to William Whitehead (1715-1785) — who had spent much of his life as a guest of Lord Jersey at Middleton Stoney and whose main claim to fame was his send-up of the job called A Pathetic Apology for all Laureatates, past, present, and to come.

Cowley Road Hospital began as a workhouse

3:30pm Wednesday 7th December 2011

For much of the past thousand years or so Oxford’s public health and welfare policy has consisted largely of the better off — particularly members of the University — making themselves scarce in times of pestilence and, whenever possible, shifting the poor and infirm into someone else’s parish.

Home of Banbury's scrummy cakes

1:50pm Thursday 24th November 2011

They say nostalgia is not what it used to be, but a heavy whiff of the genuine article wafted through my house the other day when I brought back a few local history books.

How Corpus Christi College gained its precious cup

3:03pm Wednesday 16th November 2011

Re-roofing the hall at Corpus Christi College earlier this year has concentrated attention on Oxford’s connections with Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536).

Oxford: famous in words for 1,100 years

3:27pm Wednesday 2nd November 2011

It is exactly 1,100 years since Oxford was first written about. In 911, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle referred to a settlement, which had grown up around the Saxon Priory of St Frideswide (now Christ Church), as Oxanaforda.