I teach history at The Ohio State University. This project began when I listened in 1976 to a radio broadcast in which Jack Eddy, a solar physicist, speculated that a notable absence of sunspots in the period 1645-1715 contributed to the “Little Ice Age”: the longest and most severe episode of global cooling recorded in the last 12,000 years. The Little Ice Age coincided with a wave of wars and revolution around the Northern Hemisphere, from the overthrow of the Ming dynasty in China to the beheading of Charles I in England. I spent the next 35 years exploring how the connections between natural and human events created a fatal synergy that produced human mortality on a scale seldom seen before – and never since.
Good historical novels concentrate on gaps in the historical record, and use fiction to fill them – and in doing so, they illuminate the facts. Robinson Crusoe, the first historical novel in English (some claim the first English novel), used the story of a fictional sailor who left home in 1651 and returned in 1687 to show how the mental world in which his character grew up, riven by confessional conflict and civil war, differed from the mental world of his readers, in which colonies and capitalism had combined to produce great wealth.
Among more recent works of fiction set in the 17th century, I particularly enjoyed Günther Grass, The meeting at Telgte (1981), set in Germany in 1647; and Iain Pears An instance of the fingerpost (1997), set in Oxford in 1663. Both include real historical figures.
This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for kindle devices. We have endeavoured to create this version as close to the original artefact as possible. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we believe they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
I am the author of the Sherlockiana duology My Dear Watson and Mrs. Watson: Untold Stories. I chose these books because they all have British women at the helm, involve detectives and/or investigative processes, and contain close-to-home scandals and intrigue. In that sense, these are “domestic” mysteries—books that contain puzzles related to everyday household drama. Miss Marple, Harriet Vane, and the women of Baker Street solve literal detective cases. The secret writings of Anne Lister and Constance Wilde show how they decoded the homosexual element in their lives, and used their writing to maintain a sense of self in oppressive societies. Each of them are women after my own heart.
Gaudy Night is one of several books featuring Harriet Vane, a mystery writer who first meets detective Lord Peter Wimsey while on trial for allegedly poisoning her lover. Set in a fictional Oxford women’s college, the story involves threatening letters, escalating vandalism, and violence.
Harriet is an educated professional. She is notorious due to scandal. She is trying to balance her independence in the 1930s and her romance with Peter. She is conflicted about whether her future should involve marriage and children.
This book is both a detective story, and a novel about the work-life balance struggles faced by women. Can Harriet “have it all” on her own terms? With the respect of the right partner, and a knowledge of her own mind, needs, and desires, it’s definitely worth trying.
The twelfth book in Dorothy L Sayers' classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, introduced by actress Dame Harriet Mary Walter, DBE - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Margery Allingham's Campion Mysteries.
'D. L. Sayers is one of the best detective story writers' Daily Telegraph
Harriet Vane has never dared to return to her old Oxford college. Now, despite her scandalous life, she has been summoned back . . .
At first she thinks her worst fears have been fulfilled, as she encounters obscene graffiti, poison pen letters and a disgusting effigy when she arrives at sedate Shrewsbury…
I was a freelance writer for The Oxford Times for 20 years when it was well respected. For ten of those years, I wrote the Oxford Castaway series in which I cast away inspirational people from 5 continents whose lives have been affected by their time in the city. Even Lord Chris Pattern of Barnes – the Chancellor of Oxford University and former Governor of Hong Kong let me cast him away on Oxtopia! Oxford is still divided between Town and Gown but I stride the two and my husband was an academic at that other Oxford University: Oxford Brookes.
Weimin was the university's artist-in-residence recording the restoration of the C18th Observatory and Radcliffe hospital, the bulldozing of the site, and the building of the Maths Institute and Blavatnik School of Government near Jericho. This historic collection of art evokes past, present, and future, and Town and Gown. The artist comes from Manchuria so to me, it represents Oxford as an international city.
This book is only available from the author, email Weimin He for a signed copy for £20 plus postage.
I’m an author because I was a reader who loved to be transported to a world and land outside my own. My favorite books are the ones that introduce me to a place and time I’ve never been, an immersive read that brings me somewhere new. I believe in the power of story and the magic of its transport. Come along with me and discover a few books that do this very thing.
Julia Whalen is also a renowned audiobook narrator, and I listened to this book in her melodic voice, being carried to Oxford. Julia attended Oxford for a year, and she takes us there in this beautiful story.
The story is about a young American woman named Ella Durran who has made it to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Through twists and turns, Ella must decide whether to turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with or follow her political dreams, which are coming true. Can we change our dreams? Read to find out.
She could never have guessed what the year would hold...
'A pure delight . . . will stay with you long after you're done' TAYLOR JENKINS REID
Gazing up at the dreaming spires of Oxford, American student Ella Duran can't believe it: she has finally arrived at Oxford University.
A new life starts, and not even Ella's handsome lecturer Jamie Davenport can distract her from her classes. But, as the term goes on, Ella can't deny the growing attraction between them - an attraction that soon turns to love.
And when Ella learns of Jamie's life-changing secret, their relationship becomes…
My name is Ruthie Robinson, and I write romance because I love romance. I also love to research and learn new things, so if I can find a topic I know nothing about, study it enough to throw it into a love story, then life is golden. Games We Play is a love story first, but there’s also beer and bingo. I wrote it just after the start of the craft-beer craze. Games We Play is also a book about bingo halls, which I also enjoyed attending and learning about. So many of the interesting characters who find a home in my stories can be found at both beer joints and bingo halls.
I love this book for its size alone, as it clocks in at about 800 pages. I love a hefty book, and this sure is one. It’s also pretty, but mostly it’s a dictionary for just about anything you want to know about beer. It’s a great reference.
For millennia, beer has been a staple beverage in cultures across the globe. After water and tea, it is the most popular drink in the world, and it is at the centre centre of an over $450 billion industry. With the emergence of craft brewing and homebrewing, beer is experiencing a renaissance that is expanding the reach of the beer culture even further, bringing the art of brewing into homes and widening the interest in beer as an important cultural item. The Oxford Companion to Beer is the first reference work to fully investigate the history and vast scope of…
I am an Oxford local historian, and the only Oxford guide endorsed by the Lewis Carroll Society. I have helped shape Oxford’s annual Alice’s Day since the first one in 2007, and have participated in French, Dutch, Canadian, Brazilian and British TV and radio documentaries, most notably for BBC 2 and BBC Radio 4. My interest is mainly the many Oxford realities which are hidden away within the apparent fantasy of the ‘Alice’ books, an angle which has enabled me to lecture on this internationally famous topic as far away as Assam in India. Subsequently, my appreciation of Carroll’s versatility as a mathematician, photographer, inventor, diarist, and letter writer has grown steadily over the years.
A teasingly insightful glimpse of the Victorian Oxford of Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, the two protagonists – and yet they aren’t! Yes, there is an Oxford University don with a penchant for photography, and yes his favourite subject is a ten-year-old local girl, and yes the text is scattered with subtle Wonderland and Looking-Glass references, but this is otherwise a quite different, very cleverly contrived, story. Structured as the inner thoughts of the main characters, After Such Kindness engagingly explores the dilemmas posed by the unusual friendship between a mature clergyman bachelor – Arnold convincingly captures Carroll’s playful sense of humour – and an inquisitive and trusting young girl, while sustaining a lurking sense of foreboding through to a thought-provoking finale.
When the writer, Oxford scholar and photographer John Jameson visits the home of his vicar friend, he is entranced by Daisy, his youngest daughter. Jameson charms her with his wit and child-like imagination, teasing her with riddles and inventing humorous stories as they enjoy afternoons alone by the river and in his rooms.
The shocking impact of this unusual friendship is only brought to light when, years later, Daisy, unsettled in her marriage, rediscovers her childhood diaries hidden in an old toy chest.
Inspired by the tender and troubling friendship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, After Such Kindness demonstrates…
Proper English—who
needs it? Certainly not Ape, the London urchin who stole my heart in this
gentle historical mystery.
I just love the lingo in this book: "He's all mild and polite, then
turns up damned handy with his fives. That was quite a wisty caster!" Ape
grinned at the memory. "Man of parts, his lordship."
His lordship is Piers,
Lord Petteril, and both he and Ape are delightfully mysterious and unconventional
characters for a Regency-set tale. Together, the two mismatched protagonists
manage to solve a mystery (not murder, but theft) and incidentally discover a
lot about themselves in the process.
This book has wonderful characters and perfectly pitched writing. It's Agatha Christie meets Georgette Heyer.
A missing family heirloom – and one of the family stole it.
In the spring of 1812, Piers Withan is dragged from his beloved Oxford to be the new Viscount Petteril. Burdened by responsibilities he doesn’t want and the remnants of a family who don’t want him, he is saved from an irredeemable mistake by Ape, the small thief burgling his house.
When the family heirloom known as the Petteril Necklace is found to be missing, Piers seeks out his burglar to get it back. However, their search leads them to Piers’s own family – entitled, resentful and largely indebted.…
My literary interest began in childhood when my love for rhyme encouraged me to write limericks and poems. In 2009, my first novel, An Ordinary Life was published, which I considered to be a therapeutic exercise to see where it would lead, and here I am, much wiser, but still learning. Becoming an author has greatly enhanced my appreciation of the written word and how powerful it can be, hence, my book choices – a personal literary journey.
Martin Amis’s first novel, published in 1973, was the first book that I read from cover to cover.
I was only eighteen at the time and even though my memory of the story is vague, I remember being drawn in by the unique and compelling way it was told.
I went on to read other works by the same author, but The Rachel Papers has a particular poignancy, in that it has lingered in my psyche for over forty years. Even in adolescence, I came to realise that books are as individual as the person reading them.
In his uproarious first novel Martin Amis, author of the bestselling London Fields, gave us one of the most noxiously believable -- and curiously touching -- adolescents ever to sniffle and lust his way through the pages of contemporary fiction. On the brink of twenty, Charles High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the seduction of a girl named Rachel -- a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her.
This book is another that absolutely stands out in a crowded genre – a real gem. I could not put this one down.
The author manages to pack wit and humour into each page while also tackling themes of inequality and oppression. Beautifully written, fast paced, with one of my favourite lead characters of all time. The characterisation is just brilliant. I just cannot fault this wonderful book.
Ryan Wilkins grew up on a trailer park, a member of what many people would call the criminal classes. As a young Detective Inspector, he's lost none of his disgust with privileged elites - or his objectionable manners. But he notices things; they stick to his eyes. His professional partner, DI Ray Wilkins, of affluent Nigerian-London heritage, is an impeccably groomed,…
Since childhood I have wanted to know why things look as they do. Every object expresses what was once an idea in someone’s mind. Looking from things to the people who made them and back again, we understand both better. This single question has led me through a lifetime of writing about material culture, architecture, applied art and craft. I have written books about Stonehenge, the Gothic Revival and antiquarianism in the Romantic age. I also hosted a podcast series, for the London Review of Books.
This was the first book about architecture I read and it remains one of my favourites. Clark wrote it in 1928, long before ‘Civilisation’ made him a television star and it has the freshness of a young man trying out ideas and working to understand something he doesn’t like. He was writing about Gothic architecture at a time when it was completely out of fashion. Clark’s subtitle ‘an essay in the history of taste’ is tongue in cheek because Gothic for his generation meant bad taste. Tracing its roots back into the eighteenth century Clark shows how it developed to embody the ideals of the Victorian age.
First published in 1928, this informative study offers an introduction to the most influential and widespread artistic movement that England ever produced - the Gothic revival. It shows how buildings once neglected and laughed at could latterly be seen as having grace and artistic merit.
