Eccentric Oxford [Hardcover]

This refreshing pocket-sized guide will take you through the looking glass into an Oxford as yet unknown.Charmingly eclectic little guide.These delightful guide books are perfect for anyone with an interest in England's most famous university cities.Ben Le Vay's Eccentric Oxford - Travel advice and holiday tips featuring the best pubs and restaurants, insider secrets, stories and historical eccentricities. Also including off-the-tourist-track walks and cycle routes, quirky people, rituals and events, colleges and students, River Cherwell, punting and boat races, history and architecture.This new edition of Ben le Vays irrepressible and irreverent guide to one of the greatest of English cities has been updated and expanded to include even more entertaining tales. There are more civilian/non-academic eccentrics, there is more local history, and theres a particularly fascinating bit of military history about Oxford that even many locals have never heard of. Have a pint in the superb central Oxford pub garden where Bill Clinton didnt inhale wacky backy and TVs Inspector Morse downed his pints. Stroll through the college quads and cloisters where founders of several US states, American revolutionaries and US Supreme Court judges studied. But best of all, learn how to punt like an English gentleman in our humorous guide to this strange method of transport!Dreaming spires, honeyed stone, cycling dons ... forget all that tourist twaddle, says Benedict le Vay. Find out the secrets the colleges don't want you to know, the inside track on the best pubs and eating places, the scandal and gossip about nutty professors and disgraceful students past and present, the brilliant stories about the great, the good and the bad. With 8 maps and a mix of colour and black and white illustrations and photographs, this is the essential guide to take you beyond the normal sights.William Morris called Oxford 'a perfect jewel' of a city; Benedict le Vay goes in search of the quirkier gems als