Torrential rain, inadequate umbrellas and the sort of cold that creeps into you from the feet up set the scene for the Sunday morning Harvest Festival in our church down by the banks of the Thames. Farm machinery lies inactive in the barns and farmyards and the local farmer strolls into church looking smart and […]

Three colleges – University College, Merton College and Balliol vie for being the oldest of the academic communities in  Oxford. If there is a foolproof way of deciding which of these was the very first I haven’t heard tell of it. In a village quiz I did once politely query the absolute certainty of the […]