Today I undertook a survey of the City of Oxford and a general inspection of the University of Oxford on behalf of the Queen. I will be sending a detailed, confidential, saucy report to Her Majesty by beaver shortly, but here are my preliminary notes.
The City
Oxford is, it is immediately obvious, an industrial city containing an ancient University; it is not just the environs of the railway station that are classic brownland. Cars infest the city like mechanical plague rats. Where Cambridge's collegiate centre is broadly pedestrianised, only Cornmarket Street (and to a lesser degree Queen Street) in Oxford makes any pretence of catering chiefly to the walker; furthermore, there is a higher occurrence of “classic” buildings being neighboured by modern functionalities.
Indeed, the architecture, even at its best, is not a great boon for the city. A series of fine buildings in white sandstone (the blandest of stones) does not a fine city make; indeed, this building component makes Oxford appear as a vast, decadent beach on the Isis, that sluggish tributary of the Thames. The Radcliffe Camera, the best elements of Christ Church, and the Saxon tower of one of the churches are genuinely strokes of genius, but there is no clear competitor to Cambridge's King's College or the cousin of Montmartre headquartered round the Cantabrian Magdalen Bridge.
It must also be said that the apparent populace of the two cities over summer weighs robustly in Cambridge's favour. Denuded of its natural student populace, Oxford feels rather like a model village, swamped by half-interested tourists. Cambridge, perhaps due to its more compact manner, manages to escape this damnation by concentrating its “key populace” and its points of interest closely.
There are a number of quirky little cafes and bookshops, which do speak for a certain vibrancy to the intellectual culture of the city (quelle surprise), and it's a joy to behold the Oxfam Bookshop's holdings in 17th century vellum-bound manuscripts. Nonetheless, as a city it is markedly inferior to Cambridge. Its chief virtue lies in one of its hospitals having employed my friend Hannah today.
The University
I inspected a number of the colleges today – Christ Church, Wadham, Exeter, Brasenose and Jesus. Christ Church is, commercially, the equivalent of King's College, Cambridge; it charges entrance (including to the cathedral contained within, see below) and is famous for cliché photographs of its great front quadrangle lawn and its use in Harry Potter and Golden Compass films. I did not cough up the £6.50 to enter as a student – that money should properly go towards actually paying tuition at my actual University.
Wadham, an alma mater of my grandfather, had a pleasant if bland frontage, with an attractive front quadrangle. I bought a keepsake from its porter's office, which was manned by an apparently monolingual Filipino. The negotiation was perhaps the most exhaustive ever made over a bookmark of a minor Oxbridge college.
Brasenose was closed for some sort of building work; no amount of raising the royal banner could convince its hidden watchmen to allow entry. Jesus had its front gates open, with views onto the front quad, but it was in fact closed – a Secret Garden of a place, and a marvellous film reference.
Exeter had a front quad with walls graffitied by victorious rowing 8s over time. I frankly found this charming, in a yobbish, Gap Yah sort of way. It was innocently triumphalistic, and most of the pieces were done with a surprising sensitivity to colour – pastels against the white sandstone blended well, leaving a maritime, mutative feeling.
The University itself – aside from its inflated academic reputation – was impressive architecturally, if overly homogeneous. Geographically it was not always sited to best effect, though there is nothing but Providence to account for that fact of history.
The Church
I visited 10 current or former church buildings (8 Anglican, 1 Methodist) in Oxford, attempting to rally the Divines of the nation to the Queen's banner. Alas, I met not one Divine, nor Assembly, nor Parson nor Person, nor any such figure of authority. Find below an inventory of my visits and their results:
*Christ Church Cathedral Church: General entrance involves a cost equivalent to £1.50 in the overall entrance free to Christ Church. The battle is already lost if a continued church presence in a building matters more than the public accessibility and image of accessibility given by charging entrance.
*St Ebbe's: An evangelical church with a second base in the suburb of Headington. Closed and poorly presented external reading materials.
*St Aldate's: A charismatic evangelical church with a modern glass porch on an impressive older church building. Good external materials and a Providentially welcoming courtyard in front The glass doors were, however, literally barred by a great wooden beam, as if the inhabitants expected a siege any moment. The glass might not suffice for fortification, I fear.
*St Mary the Virgin: On the Hight Street, in front of the Radcliffe Camera. Free to enter, but a charge to ascend the tower. Almost self-parodically, in this city of liberal theologians, it sold a book called “The Christian Atheist: Belonging Without Believing” recommended by Oxford don and noted atheist Philip Pullman. I left shortly after seeing this.
*St Martin's Carfax: Demolished in 1896 to expand the crossroads (Carfax), now simply a tower, which charges for ascent.
*St Michael at the Northgate: Stunning Saxon tower, genuinely peaceful and holy within. One dubious claim made in its literature: it boasts of a close connection to the Reformed martyrs Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. This connection? It was formerly connected to the prison where the three were held. No, no-one from the church sought to help them. The connection relates to the parish's complicity in murder.
*St Mary Magdalen: At the north of the city centre, this impressive building is next to and associated with the Martyrs Memorial of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. It was closed when I visited, and quite imposingly quiet. Its chief Sunday service: High Mass. That is to say, a key conceptual phrase the three martyrs died, in part, for condemning. At best distasteful and ill-judged, at worst offensive and contemptible.
*Wesley Memorial Church: The Wesley Church was the only church building I managed to enter which felt like it might still have a congregation. Though there was a slight feel of the namby-pamb in the air but there was also a feeling of a living place, with actual Christian belief and an impulse for the growth of the Kingdom.
*St Peter's College Chapel: Closed, save for two fellows carrying materials out. One gave me a frankly suspicious look, as if I, with my faded khaki cap and M&S pullover, was planning a heist of the chapel silver.
*Exeter College Chapel: Built in stunning Victorian Gothic with magnificent ceiling bosses. The nave was, however, closed for a choir practice. Quite acceptable, given that as a private chapel it does not owe the public the right to worship or pray there (it does raise an intriguing discussion of Zizioulas' theory of the local church, however...intriguing if you are interested in the finer points of ecumenical ecclesiological discourse stemming from the Orthodox trajectory, anyway).
Conclusio
Given the loyalty of Oxford and its University to the King in the Civil War, I had hoped to gather support for the banner of Her Majesty, but the general atmosphere was of a pretentious Toy Town, highly monetized (even more so than the crassly commercial Cambridge), with an Established church structure in disarray (though evidently, thank God, God-fearers and God-fearing churches still in action).
The one absolute highlight was a visit to the Crown pub – visited by Shakespeare on his Jacobean route to Stratford from London. Though the beer was stale from dirty pumps (like what seems like most Oxford pubs, the Crown served more than the usual number of real ales), it was respectable, and the décor was traditional. There was a whiff of the Inklings in the air. It felt like – here, things happen! Here, actual thoughts are thought, thoughts beyond the yearly pretentions of academia and misguided intensity of the privately schooled populace.
Before my final point, I must confess an interest against Oxford – my grandfather's BSc was gained at Cambridge. This is, I think, balanced out by two points: first, that my grandfather was also educated at Wadham, as mentioned; second, that both Cambridge and Oxford rejected me for my Masters (I am a true Durham student in that respect – an Oxbridge reject – ironically, given the Durham course is markedly superior in reputation to the Oxbridge equivalents).
In conclusion, then, I believe Her Majesty's interests may be better served by Cambridge-men (from a finer city and more robust church), unless some stout-hearted fellow or fellette should step forward to claim Oxfordshire for the Crown.
Finally, there was a show scheduled for September at the New Theatre called “Puppetry of the Penis 3D”. What?
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