Tuesday, October 6, 2015

The timeless beauty of Oxford

It’s always a little thrilling to see a place in person that you’ve seen – often many times – in the movies or on TV. I don’t know why. I guess it’s one of our child-like characteristics.

It happens a lot in New York. You’re just walking along and suddenly, there’s Tiffany’s and you’re looking around for Audrey Hepburn with her coffee and croissant.

It doesn’t have to be New York though. See these steps? Those are the front steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the triumphant music that accompanied Rocky on his victorious ascent.

One of the stops on one of our day trips in England with The English Bus was Oxford. It’s likely, unless you’ve never gone to the movies or watched TV, that you’re very familiar with Oxford.

I loved Brideshead Revisited, the 1981 11-part television series. (I also loved Evelyn Waugh’s novel on which the series was based.) The two young men, Charles Ryder and Lord Sebastian Flyte, met at Oxford and there are beautiful scenes, outdoors and indoors, of the time they shared there.

Since we returned from England, we’ve seen the movie Testament of Youth, based on the pacifist Vera Brittain’s memoir of World War I. Vera also went to Oxford and it was nice to see her there so soon after we had been there ourselves. This is a scene of them making the movie.

And just in the last week, watching the legal drama TV series called Silk, I saw Oxford again when one of the barristers travelled from London to Oxford on a case.

Oxford, made up of 38 separate colleges, is considered to be the oldest university in the English-speaking world. There are records of teaching there that go back to 1096.

What follows are some of my favourite photos of the time we spent in Oxford. The first is, I think, the most commonly seen venue in the movies and on TV. (Don't forget to click on the photos to enlarge. You won't be sorry.)

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