My father was a graduate student at Oxford in the early 1960s, where the conventions and etiquette of clothing were crucial to the pervasive class consciousness of the place and time.
And certainly having gone to Oxford, and seen some of the other students there, I wouldn’t say the ones at my school were less capable. They could’ve been there.
I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they’d never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!
I did a law degree but was miserable the whole time. I was supposed to join a law firm in London but instead went to Oxford to do a master’s in philosophy.
The Rhodes is something I’ve always really wanted. I would never have applied for it if I didn’t really want to go. The opportunity to study at Oxford is amazing.
I studied law at Warwick University, then philosophy at Oxford. I met my wife Leah there. She is American, so I followed her to New York.
I wanted to be a war reporter – scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn’t want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.
Karan Thapar is an endangered species. They don’t make them like him anymore. True, thousands have gone to the Doon Valley School after him, as indeed to Oxford and Cambridge universities. But Karan Thapar is more than the sum of his upbringing. He’s a gentleman journalist.
There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.
I live part of the time in Oxford, and I love it.
I could go to Oxford, I could immerse myself in a new culture, I could develop my intellectual capital, I could expand my network, I can travel from country to country like it’s state to state, and being in that fraternity of Rhodes Scholars was just a truly special demarcation.
When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.
When I arrived to study at Oxford in October 1963, the bohemian style was black plastic or leather jackets for women and black leather or navy donkey jackets for men. I stuck to cavalry twills and a duffle coat, at least for a few months.
People who go to Oxford and Cambridge are often unproductive. What am I saying? This is nonsense. No, sometimes they get so competitive that, unless they’re going to be Pulitzer prize-winning, they can’t get off their backside.
I was away in France, as I was studying French and German, and a friend of mine bumped into a guy called Richard Curtis, who was producing the Oxford Revue that year. Two people had dropped out and he asked me to step in.
What I like about Oxford is how small it is; it’s really more of a big town than a city.
If you Google me, you’ll find plenty of ‘dumb blonde’ references – even though I graduated with honors from Stanford and studied at Oxford University. I don’t let it bother me.
Oxford also taught me something else – it taught me scepticism.
When I was 16, walking down Oxford Street, I saw Ian Brown. I said, ‘Are you Ian Brown?’ He said no and walked off, but I am sure it was him.
I had a great time at Oxford, got a wonderful, wonderful education there.
I was at this dinner for Rhodes Scholars. And we were in the Rhodes mansion, which is this fancy mansion on the Oxford campus. And I remember I looked up in the rotunda, and I saw that etched into the marble were the names of Rhodes Scholars who had left Oxford, and had fought and died in World War II.
I prefer simpler shirts, like a solid oxford or pinstripe, and with a solid cashmere crewneck or V-neck.
In school, all my teachers and my mum were super routing for me to study at Oxford. I picked music as a career choice, and this didn’t sit too well with them!
When I joined the Sunday Times the people I was competing with were all 10 or 15 years younger, they all had double firsts from Oxford or Cambridge, they were all bright as new pins.
My background is economics and maths. I think one of the reasons I studied humanities at all, or even went into journalism, is because, like, science and maths wasn’t cool in England when I was growing up. No one ever talked to the engineering students at Oxford.
One Oxford poet confessed to me that I had been scary because I talked American and wore tennis shoes.
Having gone to a public school, I thought I knew about posh people. But I didn’t know anything until I went to Oxford.
It was 1988, and I was just finishing a D.Phil at Oxford University on the topic of ‘Nietzsche and German Idealism.’
I was born in the UK and brought up by my single mother in Ghana, where being black was unexceptional. As an adult, I learnt to succeed in white Britain, going from a state sixth form, to Oxford university, to a well-paid job in the City, to becoming the first black Conservative MP to attend the cabinet.
When I first decided to take off the tap shoes and concentrate on theatre directing, Dominic Dromgoole got in touch to ask if I’d like to do something with Oxford Stage Company. My reaction was negative.
At the age of 14, I moved across town to Magdalen College School, Oxford, where science played a much larger role in the curriculum.
Oxford is a very special place. You really sensed the value of a good education there.
In fact the experience at Oxford has really helped me later in life.
I worry that people think you have to go to a university to be a good writer, which is categorically untrue. I don’t think I learned how to write at Oxford. I did not go to any creative writing classes or anything.
I started writing poetry when I was 12 years old and also undertook vocal training since a young age. However, it was only during my time at the University of Oxford did the musician in me came alive.
For nine years, till the spring of 1881, we lived in Oxford, in a little house north of the Parks, in what was then the newest quarter of the University town.
I didn’t know a thing about Oxford and had never been to Britain. My father suggested it because in 1939 he had been about to take up a place at Wadham College, but the war broke out, and he joined the Army instead.
After I returned from Oxford, I spent 5-6 years in a village in Madhya Pradesh – 25 km. outside Bhopal – along with a group of people working with the communities. But, over time, we realised that there were just too many constraints, and for ordinary citizens to be the change agent was not that easy.
I came from a working-class family, but I was supported by a grant system and had my fees paid, so I came out of Oxford with a debt of something like £200.
I met my wife, Jennifer, while sitting next to her on the airplane on the way to England. I was heading to Oxford as a Marshall scholar.
For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.
I kept going because I just love football. But you get to the point where you’re not getting the rewards or seeing any progression and that knocks your enthusiasm. That’s why I decided to come to Oxford.
Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed tradition of doing comedy, of doing sketches, and that kind of thing.
After following more than 60,000 people for more than a dozen years, University of Oxford researchers found those who consume a plant-based diet were less likely to develop all forms of cancer combined.
I didn’t get on a plane until I was 23, after I left Oxford and was teaching at Lucy Clayton Secretarial College in London.
In many ways, I was a typical young guy out of college. I was at Oxford, where every night there’d be a late showing of some great film.
Universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard all began as Jesus-inspired efforts to love God with all ones’ mind.
I was born in Oxford. I grew up in Cascais, Portugal.
Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent.
I have worked out that I am living in London on £27 a day while David Cameron is claiming a damn sight more for his big house in Oxford.
When I finished my initial year at Oxford, I flew home to marry Kirby, who had been my girlfriend in college. We had met on a blind date.
I met my wife in Oxford, fell in love with her, and followed her to New York. I was an illegal there for the first few years, until we got married, so I ended up doing lots of interesting jobs, some for a few days, some for a few months.
The silver Thames takes some part of this county in its journey to Oxford.
Oxford is wonderful. I’m having a great time. We do go out, but I still try to spend most of my time studying in the library.
I hated improvisation because in my early days as an actor, improvisation meant somebody had just come down from Oxford and they were doing a play above a pub in Kentish Town, and the biggest ego would win.
I was a very shy girl who led an insulated life; it was only when I came to Oxford, and to Harvard before that, that suddenly I saw the power of people. I didn’t know such a power existed, I saw people criticising their own president; you couldn’t do that in Pakistan – you’d be thrown in prison.
