The Oxford Times | Features

The magnificent menace?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:40:00 +0000

Andy Waters winces on hearing the word “pest”. For the regional spokesman for the RSPB, it is an unfitting label for a magnificent bird of prey, already lost to many parts of Europe.

Oxfam reaches a milestone

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000

It is 70 years since that wartime evening when a small group of people gathered in the Old Library of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin for what was to be one of the most globally significant meetings in Oxford’s history.

Oxford's only bullfighter

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:30:00 +0000

As perhaps the only Oxford University-educated bullfighter in history, Alexander Fiske-Harrison is not a man easily scared.

Oxford's new homes builder

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Regeneration is not a word you come across too readily in many town halls these days. With councils across England having to take the axe to services and jobs, the tendency is for large-scale shopping, business park and housing developments to be quietly dropped, as grants and sources of private sector investment dry up.

Atlas scales new heights

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Map maker David McCutcheon did not expect to land a place in the Guinness World Records. But having spent 18 months working on the world’s largest atlas, that’s exactly where the 53-year-old cartographer from Charlbury should soon find himself.

Review of the year 2011

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:09:40 +0000

A review of some of the stories that made headlines in The Oxford Times in 2011

Light at end of tunnel

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:00:00 +0000

WELL, no one can say commuters have not been taken fully into account in the development of the long-awaited Oxford to London Marylebone service.

Final hurdle approaches

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Horse-drawn drawn carriages are as much a part of Europe’s great historic cities as street cafes and tour guides. Now after decades of horse-free streets, the clatter of hooves could soon be heard in the centre of Oxford.

Testing himself yet again

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:00:00 +0000

As a teenager Laurie Pycroft made headlines across the globe with his stand in support of animal testing for research at Oxford University.

Eternal life enshrined

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0000

New galleries showcasing the Ashmolean Museum’s world-famous collections from ancient Egypt will open to the public on Saturday.

Unlocking our heritage

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:10:00 +0000

In the city of ‘dreaming spires’, the University Church of St Mary the Virgin can claim the tallest and finest of them all. First recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086, the famous church on the High can also claim to be the first home of the university itself, as opposed to any of the halls and colleges. And with 300,000 visitors a year — a figure amounting to almost twice the city’s population — there cannot be many churches in England with more people passing through its doors.

Unlikely hero of Arnhem

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In a new book about 12,000 heroes, 90-year-old Peter Clarke expresses surprise to find himself on the first page. But an hour in his company reveals just why this softly spoken former solicitor, who has settled near the River Thames in Abingdon, is there as he recalls being on the banks of another river, the Lower Rhine in the Netherlands.

It was the curls that did it

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 07:30:00 +0100

Kate Bush or Emily Bronte? Rock chick or writer? Fiona Mountain was never really able to decide which path to take in life. But it is tempting to believe at 40 she has managed to get the best of both worlds since leaving home at 18 to get a job on Radio One.

A room of one's Owen

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:20:00 +0100

In a small village in northern France this month hundreds of visitors, including ambassadors and government ministers, gathered outside a startling monument.

Southmoor moves county again

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:37:59 +0100

My eye was caught, as the odd saying goes, by a letter in the Daily Telegraph on Monday from Count Nikolai Tolstoy. Its content was interesting (the suggestion that David Cameron might be hoping eventually for an EU job in Brussels) but the address he gave perhaps more so: “Southmoor, Berkshire.”

Mystery of the missing ENB review

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:35:09 +0100

Some of the thousands of people who packed into the New Theatre over last weekend for English National Ballet’s sell-out Strictly Gershwin are probably a bit surprised not to find a review of the show on the Oxford Times website.

Why give in to the motorway speeders?

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:33:18 +0100

A striking feature of the Department for Transport’s announcement of plans to raise the motorway speed limit to 80mph was the statistic that 49 per cent of drivers currently exceed 70mph.

Animals' stable future

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:20:00 +0100

It is the birthday present everyone wanted at Burford’s famous animal charity The Blue Cross.

Charmaine standing tall

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 07:20:00 +0100

It has taken 15 years and a £2.3m Lottery win for Charmaine Watson to respond to the bullies who made her school days a misery.

A taste of Japan

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:05:20 +0100

Momo Fujita-Clarkson is one of those people who can produce vast quantities of delicious food without becoming flustered. It is something she has been doing for as long as she can remember and now forms the basis of her Wolvercote-based catering business, I’m Japanese.