Oxford
1910
Oxford
1910
An intimate portrait of Oxford written in 1910, when the city's ancient spires still rose above meadows unscarred by modernity and student life moved to rhythms unchanged for centuries. F. D. How weaves together architectural observation, historical meditation, and personal recollection into a single sustained act of admiration. He walks readers through the College quads and along the river, pausing to contemplate Magdalen's bell tower, the martyrdom site where Ridley and Latimer perished, and the countless streets whose names carry the weight of generations of scholars. The book captures Oxford not as a tourist destination but as a living presence, a place where the past remains palpable in every stone. What makes this volume endure is its tone: neither detached guidebook nor reverent academic treatise, but the affectionate testimony of someone who clearly believed Oxford to be among the finest places on earth. For readers who dream of the Oxford of imagination, who wish to glimpse the city before the twentieth century fully arrived, this serves as a time capsule of atmosphere and devotion.
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“Port Meadow may be said to be a wide bright outskirt of the natural robe of Oxford: Christ Church Meadow, with its Broad Walk and its mighty trees, is like a fold about her feet deep-trimmed and bordered with a silver braid.””
— F. D. How
“Most people are conscious of the fact that in looking back upon their past lives, especially upon the days of their childhood, it is the sunshine that abides with them and not the shadow. In all the memories, let us say of a garden in which we played as children, the says are hot and bright, the flowers always blooming.So it is with Oxford. Heaven knows the place is often enough shrouded in cold, wet mist: for weeks together the streets are muddy beyond all other streets: at the beginning of each term (save that one by courtesy called "summer") the chemists' shops are (or used to be) filled with rows of bottles of quinine, to enable the poor undergraduate to struggle against a depressing climate. But who remembers all these things in after years? The man of fifty hears Oxford mentioned, and there comes back to him at once a place where old grey buildings throw shadows across shaven lawns; where the young green of the chestnut makes a brilliant splash of colour above the college garden wall; where cool bright waters wind beneath ancient willows, and it is good to bask in flannels in a punt. In fact it is the few days of real summer”
— F. D. How
“United Kingdom must be given to Oxford. There is but one other”
— F. D. How
