One Mile from Here (Strictly it's two, but.)
Every year, people flood to the place. They come to study, to work, to see the golden walls, to see Wren's dome, to peer at the Dodo's foot, or Cromwell's death mask, or Fawkes' lantern. To these, Oxford is the quintessentially charming, inoffensive English town, if somewhat bereft of tea rooms. Most, however, will pass by or glance with bemusement at the cobblestone cross set incongruously into the speckled tarmac at the head of Broad Street. The whole road surface is redone every few decades as society demands, but the cross remains like an indelible scar. The message it represents, though old, is simple. It is this: Oxford burns Bishops. Three men, Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were dragged or led to the spot as the twisting stream of monarchic favour pulled their positions out from under them, and set alight in the street, three more martyrs to a cause practically newborn.
The modern wanderers passing through on foot and bus might also pass fleeting thoughts on the parades. In the far north, between two forks, each named after the town they aim for, lies South Parade, while some way south of it, closer to the town's heart, lies North Parade. Here, a good century after men burned by Balliol on Broad, others marching under the banners of King and Parliament faced each other across a mile of open ground.
Everywhere, the old town simmers gently with the stuff of old conflicts, carefully preserved in words and names and plaques and reality, from the lingering bookbound echoes of old, friendly academic arguments, practically instilled into the stones of the older colleges, to the raging debate between Huxley and Wilberforce, on whether their common origin was Natural or Divine, right out to the fire-bombs flung by the modern protesters against the walls of unbuilt laboratories.
And yet. This is the place people perceive it to be. An uncomplicated town on the Thames,where the rivers fill with slow punters in summer and soft ice in winter. This is the Third University, with such a tradition of gentle protogeekery that a stretch of island between two branches of the same river can be called, quite officially, Mesopotamia. This is the town of the Dreaming Spires, of the roofshark, of the dreamworlds of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Brian Aldiss and Phillip Pullman, rarely offensive to anyone but the anti-elitists. Oxford, like so many of its brothers across the length and breadth, rewards those who keep to it, from the brief amusements, to the long explorations, from the stony core of Carfax out to Jericho on the weirder edge, it is home.
Even so, when the sky's a full, deep blue, all clouds seared away by the height of summer or the first chill of winter, a reminder occurs. The setting sun strikes the bright yellow stone that makes up the older city dead on, illuminating every inch with a strange incandescence. Throughout the year, Oxford burns.
The modern wanderers passing through on foot and bus might also pass fleeting thoughts on the parades. In the far north, between two forks, each named after the town they aim for, lies South Parade, while some way south of it, closer to the town's heart, lies North Parade. Here, a good century after men burned by Balliol on Broad, others marching under the banners of King and Parliament faced each other across a mile of open ground.
Everywhere, the old town simmers gently with the stuff of old conflicts, carefully preserved in words and names and plaques and reality, from the lingering bookbound echoes of old, friendly academic arguments, practically instilled into the stones of the older colleges, to the raging debate between Huxley and Wilberforce, on whether their common origin was Natural or Divine, right out to the fire-bombs flung by the modern protesters against the walls of unbuilt laboratories.
And yet. This is the place people perceive it to be. An uncomplicated town on the Thames,where the rivers fill with slow punters in summer and soft ice in winter. This is the Third University, with such a tradition of gentle protogeekery that a stretch of island between two branches of the same river can be called, quite officially, Mesopotamia. This is the town of the Dreaming Spires, of the roofshark, of the dreamworlds of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Brian Aldiss and Phillip Pullman, rarely offensive to anyone but the anti-elitists. Oxford, like so many of its brothers across the length and breadth, rewards those who keep to it, from the brief amusements, to the long explorations, from the stony core of Carfax out to Jericho on the weirder edge, it is home.
Even so, when the sky's a full, deep blue, all clouds seared away by the height of summer or the first chill of winter, a reminder occurs. The setting sun strikes the bright yellow stone that makes up the older city dead on, illuminating every inch with a strange incandescence. Throughout the year, Oxford burns.