130-478: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is a 1928 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers , her fourth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey . Much of the novel is set in the Bellona Club, a fictional London club for war veterans ( Bellona being a Roman goddess of war). On the afternoon of 10 November, ninety-year-old General Fentiman is called to the deathbed of his estranged sister, Lady Dormer. He learns that, under
260-883: A BBC TV mini-series starring Ian Carmichael as Wimsey. In 1975 it was broadcast on BBC radio as a serial in six 30-minute parts, also starring Ian Carmichael. Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers ( / s ɛər z / SAIRZ ; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. Born in Oxford , Sayers was brought up in rural East Anglia and educated at Godolphin School in Salisbury and Somerville College , Oxford, graduating with first class honours in medieval French . She worked as an advertising copywriter between 1922 and 1929 before success as an author brought her financial independence. Her first novel, Whose Body? ,
390-642: A Gilchrist Scholarship , which she was awarded in March 1912. Among the purposes of these scholarships was to sponsor women to study at university colleges. Sayers's scholarship, worth £50 a year for three years, enabled her to study modern languages at Somerville College, Oxford . After her experiences with the religious regime at Godolphin, Sayers chose Somerville, a non-denominational college, instead of an Anglican college. The all-women college of Somerville suited well, according to Kenney, because of its practice of cultivating its students to take prominent roles in
520-515: A London fringe theatre in April 1940. Notices were friendly— The Times said that Sayers poked some agreeable fun at a number of conventions, sentimental, literary, and theatrical and The Stage called the play "very amusing and provocative" —but at that stage of the war there was no demand for another light comedy in the West End, and there was no transfer. The task that preoccupied Sayers from
650-609: A book, The Floating Admiral . She edited a second collection of Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror , and as a solo effort wrote The Five Red Herrings , published in the US as Suspicious Characters . Harriet Vane does not appear in that novel, but is the central character in the next Wimsey book, Have His Carcase , published in 1932. Wimsey solves the murder but is no more successful in winning Harriet's love than he had been in Strong Poison . Have His Carcase
780-418: A car crash, resembles that in which Sayers grew up. With much of the storyline featuring bell-ringing, she spent considerable time researching campanology which gave her considerable trouble, and there were technical errors in her description of the practice. The book gained enthusiastic notices. In The News Chronicle , Charles Williams wrote that it was "not merely admirable; it is adorable. ... It
910-511: A club member and the General's personal physician, certifies death by natural causes but is unable to state the exact time the General died. As the estate would amply provide for all three claimants, the Fentiman brothers suggest a negotiated settlement, but Ann Dorland absolutely refuses. Wimsey is asked to investigate the General's time of death. Oddly enough, nobody saw the General arrive at
1040-483: A combined capacity of 1,695 seats. Hybrid buses began to be used in Oxford in 2010, and their usage has been expanded. In 2014 Oxford Bus introduced a fleet of 20 new buses with flywheel energy storage on the services it operates under contract for Oxford Brookes University . Most buses in the city now use a smartcard to pay for journeys and have free WiFi installed. The Oxford to London coach route offers
1170-441: A contrast of two "cardboard" worlds, equally fictitious—the world of advertising and the world of the post-war " Bright Young People ". (It was not very successful, because I knew and cared much more about advertising than about Bright Youth, but that is by the way.) Kenney describes the book as "flawed but brilliant". In terms of its literary status in relation to more manifestly serious fiction of Sayers's day, Kenney ranks it below
1300-503: A divorcé, Captain Oswald Arthur (known as "Mac") Fleming, a well-known journalist. Her son was given the latter's surname but was not brought to live with Sayers and her husband. The marriage, happy at first, grew more difficult as Fleming's health declined, but the couple stayed together until his death of a stroke in 1950, when he was 68. The Wimsey novels continued with Unnatural Death in 1927 and The Unpleasantness at
1430-673: A founder member of the Detection Club . This grew from informal dinners arranged by Anthony Berkeley for writers of detective fiction "for the enjoyment of each other's company and for a little shop talk ". The dinners proved such a success that the participants agreed to form themselves into a club, under the presidency of G. K. Chesterton , whom Sayers admired. She was one of the club's most enthusiastic members; she devised its elaborate initiation ritual in which new members swore to write without relying on "Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery Pokery, Coincidence or
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#17327830851601560-693: A frequent coach service to London. The Oxford Tube is operated by Stagecoach West and the Oxford Bus Company runs the Airline services to Heathrow and Gatwick airports. There is a bus station at Gloucester Green , used mainly by the London and airport buses, National Express coaches and other long-distance buses including route X5 to Milton Keynes and Bedford and Stagecoach Gold route S6. Among cities in England and Wales, Oxford has
1690-529: A job as a copywriter at S. H. Benson , then Britain's largest advertising agency. Although she had reservations about the misleading nature of advertising, she became a skilled practitioner, and remained with the firm until the end of 1929. She originated successful campaigns for products including Guinness stout and Colman's mustard. She is sometimes credited with coining the slogan "My Goodness, My Guinness", but it dates from 1935, more than five years after she left Benson's. She was, though, responsible for
1820-415: A lack of faith, declining morality, dishonesty, exploitation, disharmony and other similar problems, and believed that Dante shared the same view of his own. Once she began to read, she found herself unable to stop: I bolted my meals, neglected my sleep, work and correspondence, drove my friends crazy, and paid only a distracted attention to the doodle-bugs which happened to be infesting the neighbourhood at
1950-536: A living she taught modern languages at Hull High School for Girls . Teaching did not greatly appeal to her, and in 1917 she secured a post with the publisher and bookseller Basil Blackwell in Oxford. Returning to the city suited her well. A younger contemporary, Doreen Wallace , later described her in these years: I have never known anyone so brimful of the energy of a well-stocked mind: even at 24, when I knew her first, she knew an enormous amount about all sorts of subjects unconnected with Old French literature, which
2080-564: A man, Bill White, by whom she had a son in 1924. The novelist A. N. Wilson describes White as "motorcycling rough trade ". That liaison was short-lived—White turned out to be married—and the son, whom Sayers named John Anthony, was brought up by Ivy Shrimpton, who already had foster children in her care. Sayers concealed her son's parentage from him and from the world in general. She was known to him at first as "Cousin Dorothy", and she later posed as his adoptive mother. Only after her death were
2210-546: A mistake. In November 2022, Mogford announced that his hospitality group The Oxford Collection had joined up with Oxford Business Action Group (OBAG), Oxford High Street Association (OHSA), ROX (Backing Oxford Business), Reconnecting Oxford, Jericho Traders, and Summertown traders to launch a legal challenge to the new bus gates. The city is served by the M40 motorway , which connects London to Birmingham . The M40 approached Oxford in 1974, leading from London to Waterstock , where
2340-494: A new company, Morrells of Oxford. The new owners sold most of the pubs on to Greene King in 2002. The Lion Brewery was converted into luxury apartments in 2002. Oxford's first legal distillery , the Oxford Artisan Distillery , was established in 2017 in historic farm buildings at the top of South Park . The Taylor family of Loughborough had a bell-foundry in Oxford between 1786 and 1854. This
2470-446: A novel in the manner of the 19th-century author Wilkie Collins , whose work she admired. She was working on a biography of Collins and adopted his first-person narrative technique in a story mostly told in exchanges of letters between the characters. Peter Wimsey does not appear in the book: Brabazon writes that Sayers "tasted the joys of freedom from Wimsey". Reviews were favourable, but gave only qualified praise. In The Graphic ,
2600-485: A pedestrian style, with little concern for anything except a puzzle, or rashly incorporated out of traditional fiction elements over which they had no command. ... She mastered the art of giving a pleasant literary flavour to her stories while at the same time keeping within her own imaginative range. The first of Sayers's series of detective novels, Whose Body? , featured her amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. She had begun writing it before joining Benson's, and it
2730-412: A pristine Stradivarius violin, regarded by some as one of the finest examples in existence. The University Museum of Natural History holds the university's zoological , entomological and geological specimens. It is housed in a large neo-Gothic building on Parks Road , in the university's Science Area . Among its collection are the skeletons of a Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops , and
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#17327830851602860-474: A student at Oxford". In her off-duty hours Sayers devoted herself to writing fiction. Detective novels were popular, and Sayers saw an opportunity to produce remunerative, accessible but well-written works in the genre. She mastered the mechanics of the craft by making a close analytical study of the best models. In a biographical sketch, a later crime novelist, J. I. M. Stewart , wrote: There were already many ingenious writers, but most of them either wrote in
2990-463: A third route, also to Paddington, running via Thame , High Wycombe and Maidenhead , was provided; this was shortened in 1906 by the opening of a direct route between High Wycombe and London Paddington by way of Denham . The distance from Oxford to London was 78 miles (125.5 km) via Bletchley; 63.5 miles (102.2 km) via Didcot and Reading; 63.25 miles (101.8 km) via Thame and Maidenhead; and 55.75 miles (89.7 km) via Denham. Only
3120-500: Is 2014, with an average of 11.8 °C (53 °F) and the coldest is 1879, with a mean temperature of 7.7 °C (46 °F). The sunniest month on record is May 2020, with 331.7 hours and December 1890 is the least sunny, with 5.0 hours. The greatest one-day rainfall occurred on 10 July 1968, with a total of 87.9 mm (3.46 in). The greatest known snow depth was 61.0 cm (24.0 in) in February 1888. The city centre
3250-596: Is a cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire , England, of which it is the county town. Founded in the 8th century, it was granted city status in 1542. The city is located at the confluence of the rivers Thames (locally known as the Isis ) and Cherwell . It had a population of 163,257 in 2022. It is 56 miles (90 km) north-west of London , 64 miles (103 km) south-east of Birmingham and 61 miles (98 km) north-east of Bristol . The city
3380-512: Is a great book". The Daily Herald said, "This is unquestionably Miss Sayers's best—until the next one". In 1935 Sayers published what she intended to be the last Wimsey novel, Gaudy Night , set in Harriet Vane's old Oxford college. There is attempted murder but Wimsey identifies the culprit in time to prevent further harm. At the end of the book Wimsey proposes to Harriet (in Latin) and
3510-477: Is a small selection of the many notable buildings in Oxford. Oxford is a very green city, with several parks and nature walks within the ring road , as well as several sites just outside the ring road. In total, 28 nature reserves exist within or just outside the ring road, including: In addition to the larger airports in the region, Oxford is served by nearby Oxford Airport , in Kidlington . The airport
3640-501: Is accepted (also in Latin). In Oxford in May, and in London in June, Sayers delivered a lecture entitled "Aristotle on Detective Fiction", humorously contending that in his Poetics , Aristotle shows that what he most wished for was a good detective story. The same year Sayers worked on a script for a film to be called The Silent Passenger . Although she was promised editorial control, it
3770-706: Is also home to CAE Oxford Aviation Academy and Airways Aviation airline pilot flight training centres, and several private jet companies. The airport is also home to Airbus Helicopters UK headquarters. Direct trains run from Oxford station to London Paddington where there is an interchange with the Heathrow Express train links serving Heathrow Airport . Passengers can change at Reading for connecting trains to Gatwick Airport . Some CrossCountry trains run direct services to Birmingham International , as well as to Southampton Airport Parkway further afield. Bus services in Oxford and its suburbs are run by
3900-634: Is home to the University of Oxford , the oldest university in the English-speaking world ; it has buildings in every style of English architecture since late Anglo-Saxon . Oxford's industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing, science, and information technologies. The history of Oxford in England dates back to its original settlement in the Saxon period . Originally of strategic significance due to its controlling location on
4030-466: Is just outside the city, at the park and ride site near Kidlington . The present railway station opened in 1852. Oxford is the junction for a short branch line to Bicester , a remnant of the former Varsity line to Cambridge . This Oxford–Bicester line was upgraded to 100 mph (161 km/h) running during an 18-month closure in 2014/2015 – and is scheduled to be extended to form the planned East West Rail line to Milton Keynes. East West Rail
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4160-553: Is now strongly discouraged, and largely prevented, from using the city centre. The Oxford Ring Road or A4142 (southern part) surrounds the city centre and close suburbs Marston , Iffley , Cowley and Headington ; it consists of the A34 to the west, a 330-yard section of the A44 , the A40 north and north-east, A4142/ A423 to the east. It is a dual carriageway , except for a 330-yard section of
4290-508: Is proposed to continue through Bletchley (for Milton Keynes Central ) to Bedford , Cambridge, and ultimately Ipswich and Norwich , thus providing alternative route to East Anglia without needing to travel via, and connect between, the London mainline terminals. Chiltern Railways operates from Oxford to London Marylebone via Bicester Village , having sponsored the building of about 400 metres of new track between Bicester Village and
4420-519: Is relatively small and is centred on Carfax , a crossroads which forms the junction of Cornmarket Street (pedestrianised), Queen Street (mainly pedestrianised ), St Aldate's and the High Street ("the High"; blocked for through traffic). Cornmarket Street and Queen Street are home to Oxford's chain stores, as well as a small number of independent retailers, one of the longest established of which
4550-405: Is something far other than a typical shocker. Her characters (especially her hero) are very much alive, and she has an admirable narrative style and great constructive skill". With this second novel, Sayers was being compared with the established crime novelist Agatha Christie as an author of detective stories that were also entertaining novels about human beings. In the same year Sayers married
4680-399: Is to be hoped that Miss Sayers will not let anything check the flow of her detective-story habit. Other reviewers wrote of a "well-written and pulsating mystery story, with an astonishing number of clues cleverly evolved, and totally unexpected conclusion", and a "pleasantly-going and smartly-written detective story"; another commented, "Miss Sayers is frankly out to thrill us; but her novel
4810-1093: The Castle Mill Stream . The rapid expansion of Oxford and the development of its railway links after the 1840s facilitated expansion of the brewing trade. As well as expanding the market for Oxford's brewers, railways enabled brewers further from the city to compete for a share of its market. By 1874 there were nine breweries in Oxford and 13 brewers' agents in Oxford shipping beer in from elsewhere. The nine breweries were: Flowers & Co in Cowley Road , Hall's St Giles Brewery, Hall's Swan Brewery (see below), Hanley's City Brewery in Queen Street , Le Mills's Brewery in St. Ebbes , Morrell's Lion Brewery in St Thomas Street (see below), Simonds's Brewery in Queen Street, Weaving's Eagle Brewery (by 1869
4940-557: The Chiltern Main Line southwards in 2014. The route serves High Wycombe and London Marylebone, avoiding London Paddington and Didcot Parkway . In 1844, the Great Western Railway linked Oxford with London Paddington via Didcot and Reading ; in 1851, the London & North Western Railway opened its own route from Oxford to London Euston , via Bicester , Bletchley and Watford ; and in 1864
5070-563: The Golden Age of Detective Fiction —Christie and Margery Allingham . Kenney comments that much of Sayers's thinking on the mystery novel and literature generally can be gleaned from her reviews, which reveal much about her attitude to art. She expected authors to write excellent prose and to avoid situations and plot devices already used by other writers. Sayers did not enjoy writing Murder Must Advertise and thought it an artistic failure: I undertook (not very successfully) to present
5200-493: The Oxford Bus Company and Stagecoach West as well as other operators including Arriva Shires & Essex and Thames Travel . Oxford has one of the largest urban park and ride networks in the United Kingdom. Its five sites, at Pear Tree, Redbridge , Seacourt , Thornhill, Water Eaton and Oxford Parkway have a combined capacity of 4,930 car parking spaces, served by 20 Oxford Bus Company double decker buses with
5330-461: The Oxford Star (tabloid; free and delivered), and Oxford Journal (tabloid; weekly free pick-up). Oxford is also home to several advertising agencies . Daily Information (known locally as "Daily Info") is an event information and advertising news sheet which has been published since 1964 and now provides a connected website. Nightshift is a monthly local free magazine that has covered
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5460-577: The West End . Sayers, who kept in close contact with her son, John, sent him an account of the demanding rehearsals for the opening, a milieu new to her. The London premiere was at the Comedy Theatre in December 1936. Dennis Arundell and Veronica Turleigh played Wimsey and Harriet. It ran for more than a year, and while it was still running, Sayers rewrote it as a novel, published in 1937,
5590-529: The Westgate Oxford . The Westgate Centre is named for the original West Gate in the city wall, and is at the west end of Queen Street . A major redevelopment and expansion to 750,000 sq ft (70,000 m ), with a new 230,000 sq ft (21,000 m ) John Lewis department store and a number of new homes, was completed in October 2017. Blackwell's Bookshop is a bookshop which claims
5720-424: The 1940s to the end of her life was her translation of Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy . She said she began it after reading the original Italian version in an air-raid shelter during bombing raids. She saw parallels between the writing and the state of the world during the war. I saw the whole lay-out of Hell as something actual and contemporary; something that one can see by looking into one's self, or into
5850-815: The 1970s and 1980s, leaving behind a city which had developed far beyond the university town of the past. Oxford's latitude and longitude are 51°45′07″N 1°15′28″W / 51.75194°N 1.25778°W / 51.75194; -1.25778 , with Ordnance Survey grid reference SP513061 (at Carfax Tower , which is usually considered the centre). Oxford is 24 miles (39 km) north-west of Reading , 26 miles (42 km) north-east of Swindon , 36 miles (58 km) east of Cheltenham , 43 miles (69 km) east of Gloucester , 29 miles (47 km) south-west of Milton Keynes , 38 miles (61 km) south-east of Evesham , 43 miles (69 km) south of Rugby and 51 miles (82 km) west-north-west of London . The rivers Cherwell and Thames (also sometimes known as
5980-597: The A40 continued to Oxford. When the M40 extension to Birmingham was completed in January 1991, it curved sharply north, and a mile of the old motorway became a spur. The M40 comes no closer than 6 miles (10 km) away from the city centre, curving to pass to the east of Otmoor . The M40 meets the A34 to the north of Oxford. There are two universities in Oxford, the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University , as well as
6110-421: The A40 where two residential service roads adjoin, and was completed in 1966. The main roads to/from Oxford are: On 28 February 2022 a zero-emission pilot area became operational in Oxford city centre. Zero-emission vehicles can be used without incurring a charge but all petrol and diesel vehicles (including hybrids) incur a daily charge if they are driven in the zone between 7am and 7pm. A consultation on
6240-486: The Act of God" and "to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Gangs, Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, Super-Criminals and Lunatics, and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to Science". The club charged no subscription fees, and to raise money for the acquisition of premises members contributed to collaborative works for broadcast or print. The first, organised by Sayers,
6370-501: The Bellona Club in 1928. In that year Sayers published Lord Peter Views the Body and edited and introduced an anthology of other writers' works, Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror , retitled for its American edition the following year as The Omnibus of Crime . In 1929, her last year as an employee of Benson's, Sayers and her husband moved from London to the small Essex town of Witham , which remained their home for
6500-512: The Bluntisham rectory. Kenney writes that the two formed a lifelong friendship through "a youthful sharing of books, imagination, and confidences". Otherwise, Kenney comments, Sayers, "like many future authors ... lived largely a life of books and stories". She could read by the age of four, and made full use of her father's extensive library as she grew up. Sayers was educated chiefly at home. Her father began teaching her Latin before she
6630-453: The Body in 1928. Clouds of Witness , the second Wimsey novel, was published in 1926, and was well received. The Daily News commented: Not for a long time has there appeared a detective story so amusing, so lively, so witty and so agreeable. ... All Miss Sayers's characterisation is bright, natural and amusing; not a character in the book hangs fire, and there is a delightful absence of conventional clichés throughout ... It
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#17327830851606760-724: The Eagle Steam Brewery) in Park End Street and Wootten and Cole's St. Clement's Brewery. The Swan's Nest Brewery, later the Swan Brewery, was established by the early 18th century in Paradise Street , and in 1795 was acquired by William Hall. The brewery became known as Hall's Oxford Brewery, which acquired other local breweries. Hall's Brewery was acquired by Samuel Allsopp & Sons in 1926, after which it ceased brewing in Oxford. Morrell's
6890-555: The Isis locally, supposedly from the Latinised name Thamesis ) run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre. These rivers and their flood plains constrain the size of the city centre. Oxford has a maritime temperate climate ( Köppen : Cfb ). Precipitation is uniformly distributed throughout the year and is provided mostly by weather systems that arrive from the Atlantic . The lowest temperature ever recorded in Oxford
7020-514: The Oxford music scene since 1991. Oxford is home to many museums , galleries , and collections, most of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions . The majority are departments of the University of Oxford . The first of these to be established was the Ashmolean Museum , the world's first university museum , and the oldest museum in the UK. Its first building
7150-820: The Rev Robert Sayers, from County Tipperary , Ireland. At the time of Sayers's birth her father was headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School and chaplain of Christ Church , one of the colleges of the University of Oxford . Her mother, born in Shirley , Hampshire, was a daughter of a solicitor descended from landed gentry on the Isle of Wight . Sayers was proud of the Leigh connection and later considered calling herself "D. Leigh Sayers" in professional matters, before settling for "Dorothy L. Sayers"—insisting on
7280-491: The Second World War". Sayers insisted from the outset on realism, modern speech and a portrayal of Jesus. He had appeared as a character in numerous Passion plays in earlier centuries, but this was the first time an actor had played the part on radio; the press referred to "a radio Oberammergau ". Some conservative Christians expressed outrage. The Lord's Day Observance Society called it a "revolting imitation of
7410-603: The Teeth of the Evidence —featuring Wimsey, Egg and others —and began a series of articles for The Spectator called The Wimsey Papers between 17 November 1939 and 26 January 1940, using Wimsey and his family and friends to convey Sayers's thoughts on life and politics in the early weeks of the Second World War . For the theatre Sayers wrote a comedy, Love All , a wry take on the eternal triangle . It opened in
7540-809: The United Kingdom, after the British Library . The Bodleian Library is a legal deposit library, which means that it is entitled to request a free copy of every book published in the United Kingdom. As such, its collection is growing at a rate of over three miles (five kilometres) of shelving every year. As well as the BBC national radio stations , Oxford and the surrounding area has several local stations, including BBC Radio Oxford , Heart South , Destiny 105 , Greatest Hits Radio and Hits Radio Oxfordshire , along with Oxide: Oxford Student Radio (which went on terrestrial radio at 87.7 MHz FM in late May 2005). A local TV station , Six TV : The Oxford Channel,
7670-537: The architects of the cathedral. It opened in June 1937, was well reviewed, and made a profit for the festival. The following year Sayers returned to a religious theme with He That Should Come , a radio Nativity play , broadcast by the BBC on Christmas Day, and in 1939 the Canterbury Festival staged another of her plays, The Devil to Pay . In the same year she published a collection of short stories, In
7800-528: The area is often used by film and TV crews. Aside from the city centre, there are several suburbs and neighbourhoods within the borders of the city of Oxford, including: Oxford is at the centre of the Oxford Green Belt , which is an environmental and planning policy that regulates the rural space in Oxfordshire surrounding the city, aiming to prevent urban sprawl and minimize convergence with nearby settlements. The policy has been blamed for
7930-570: The arts and public life. She enjoyed her time there, and, she later said, acquired a scholarly method and habit of mind which served her throughout her life. She was a distinguished student, and, in Kenney's view, Sayers's novels and essays reflect her liberal education at Oxford. Among the lifelong friends she made at Somerville was Muriel St Clare Byrne , who later played an important part in Sayers's career and became her literary executor . Sayers
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#17327830851608060-487: The body to the armchair. Wimsey believes the General's death is too convenient to be natural and has the body exhumed. An autopsy proves the General was poisoned by an overdose of the heart medication digitalis . When it becomes known that the body will be exhumed, Ann Dorland, who has an obvious motive, suddenly and suspiciously agrees to the proposed compromise with the Fentimans. Wimsey finds Ann Dorland distressed by
8190-422: The body was discovered, Penberthy was able to certify a natural death without arousing suspicion, in spite of Robert's intervention which initially confused the time. Penberthy writes a confession publicly exonerating Ann Dorland, and shoots himself in the club library. The three original claimants to the estate meet to divide it equitably, and Robert begins courting Ann. Writing in 1990 Katherine Kenny described
8320-399: The book as the most successful of Sayers' early fiction, coupling a slick detective plot with vivid details of post-war English life. "The book is a tightly constructed little drama based upon the old joke about an Englishman's club so stuffy that its dead members cannot be differentiated from the living – a pertinent comment upon the society so described.” In 1973 the novel was the subject of
8450-435: The callous and humiliating behaviour of Dr Penberthy, to whom she had been secretly engaged. It was he, with an eye on her expected inheritance, who had insisted she should refuse the compromise and fight for the whole estate. When it became known that the General would be exhumed, Penberthy broke the engagement off, giving highly insulting reasons. He had hoped that Ann would be embarrassed into silence, but Wimsey manages to get
8580-795: The city of Oxford was a county borough , independent from the county council. Oxford City Council meets at the Town Hall on the street called St Aldate's in the city centre. The current building was completed in 1897, on a site which had been occupied by Oxford's guildhall since the 13th century. Most of Oxford is an unparished area , but there are four civil parishes within the city's boundaries: Blackbird Leys , Littlemore , Old Marston , and Risinghurst and Sandhills . Oxford's economy includes manufacturing, publishing and science-based industries as well as education, sports, entertainment, breweries, research and tourism. Oxford has been an important centre of motor manufacturing since Morris Motors
8710-597: The club at his usual time of 10 am. His manservant reports that the General did not return home after visiting Lady Dormer the day before. An unknown man by the name of Mr Oliver had telephoned to say that the General would be spending the night with him. Robert Fentiman says that he knows of Oliver, and much time is spent chasing the elusive individual through several countries before Robert admits that he does not actually exist. Wimsey discovers that General Fentiman began to feel unwell while visiting his sister, and left her house to visit Dr Penberthy. The General then travelled to
8840-438: The club, meeting George Fentiman en route . At the club, the General informed Robert of the terms of the will; later, Robert discovered his grandfather had died of heart failure in the club library. Annoyed at losing his inheritance, Robert concealed the body overnight and invented Oliver to cover up the death. The next day, while the club members had stepped outside to observe the usual two minutes' silence at 11 am, Robert moved
8970-496: The controversy died down. The BBC's religious advisory committee, representing all the major Christian denominations, was united in support of the cycle, which came to be regarded as one of Sayers's greatest achievements. Sayers's other main work from the wartime years was her extended essay The Mind of the Maker , arguing that human creativity is the attribute that gives mankind its best chance of understanding, however imperfectly,
9100-612: The encouragement of her tutor, Mildred Pope , and in 1915 she was awarded first class honours in what was termed modern (in fact medieval) French in her final examinations. Despite her examination results, she was ineligible to be awarded a degree, as Oxford did not formally confer them on women. When the university changed its rules in 1920, Sayers was among the first to have her degree officially awarded. After graduating from Oxford, Sayers, who had begun writing verse in childhood, brought out two slim volumes of poetry, Op. I (1916) and Catholic Tales and Christian Songs (1918). To earn
9230-605: The facts made explicit. Whose Body? , published in both Britain and the US, sold well enough for the London publishers, Fisher Unwin , to ask for a sequel. Before that was published Sayers featured Wimsey in a short story, "The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will", published in Pearson's Magazine in July 1925, which, together with other short stories centred on Wimsey, came out in book form in Lord Peter Views
9360-482: The final three Wimsey novels, The Nine Tailors , Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon . Like Murder Must Advertise , The Nine Tailors draws on the author's personal experiences. Her portrait of the Rev Theodore Venables "tenderly evoked" her father, "unworldly, self-effacing [and] lovable", as Reynolds puts it. The rectory in which Wimsey and his manservant, Bunter , are offered refuge after
9490-590: The following two years Sayers published two Wimsey novels (neither featuring Harriet Vane)— Murder Must Advertise (1933) and The Nine Tailors (1934)—and a collection of short stories, Hangman's Holiday , featuring not only the patrician Wimsey but also a proletarian salesman and solver of mysteries, Montague Egg . She edited a third and final volume of Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror and began reviewing crime novels for The Sunday Times . Her reviews covered works by most of her important contemporaries, including her fellow "Queens of Crime" of
9620-430: The genre of detective fiction away from pure puzzles lacking characterisation or depth, and became recognised as one of the four "Queens of Crime" of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction of the 1920s and 1930s, along with Agatha Christie , Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh . She was a founder member of the Detection Club , and worked with many of its members in producing novels and radio serials collaboratively, such as
9750-463: The importance they attain through the events of the story. Sayers was disappointed with the book, and reproached herself for failing to do better with the material provided by her co-author. Her second book of the year was Strong Poison , in which she introduced the character Harriet Vane , whom Wimsey proves innocent of a murder charge. Sayers originally intended that at the end of the book Wimsey would marry Harriet and retire from detection, ending
9880-535: The inclusion of the middle initial. When Sayers was four years old her father accepted the post of rector of Bluntisham-cum-Earith in the Fen Country of East Anglia . The appointment carried a better stipend than the Christ Church posts and the large rectory had considerably more room than the family's house in Oxford, but the move cut them off from the city's lively social scene. This affected
10010-400: The introduction of a wider zero-emission zone is expected in the future, at a date to be confirmed. Oxford has eight bus gates, short sections of road where only buses and other authorised vehicles can pass. Six further bus gates are currently proposed. A council-led consultation on the traffic filters ended on 13 October 2022. On 29 November 2022, Oxfordshire County Council cabinet approved
10140-460: The introduction of the Guinness toucan , painted by the artist John Gilroy , for which she penned accompanying verse such as "If he can say as you can/Guinness is good for you/How grand to be a Toucan/Just think what Toucan do". The toucan was used in Guinness's advertisements for decades. Kenney writes that at Benson's, Sayers again enjoyed "some of the fun and camaraderie she had experienced as
10270-494: The introduction on a trial basis, for a minimum period of six months. The trial will begin after improvement works to Oxford railway station are complete, which is expected to be by October 2024. The additional bus gates have been controversial; Oxford University and Oxford Bus Company support the proposals but more than 3,700 people have signed an online petition opposing the new traffic filters for Marston Ferry Road and Hollow Way, and hotelier Jeremy Mogford has argued they would be
10400-493: The large rise in house prices in Oxford, making it the least affordable city in the United Kingdom outside of London, with estate agents calling for brownfield land inside the green belt to be released for new housing. The vast majority of the area covered is outside of the city, but there are some green spaces within that which are covered by the designation, such as much of the Thames and river Cherwell flood-meadows , and
10530-548: The largest single room devoted to book sales in the whole of Europe, the Norrington Room (10,000 sq ft). There is a long history of brewing in Oxford. Several of the colleges had private breweries, one of which, at Brasenose , survived until 1889. In the 16th century brewing and malting appear to have been the most popular trades in the city. There were breweries in Brewer Street and Paradise Street , near
10660-628: The last of her full-length books featuring Wimsey. While the play was in rehearsal the organisers of the Canterbury Festival invited Sayers to write a drama for performance in Canterbury Cathedral , following the 1935 staging there of T. S. Eliot 's Murder in the Cathedral , and other plays. The result, The Zeal of Thy House , was her dramatisation in blank verse of the life and work of William of Sens , one of
10790-577: The latter—an all-male group of writers—but became friendly with C. S. Lewis and other members. Sayers, who was considered to have a good contralto voice, joined the Oxford Bach Choir and developed an unrequited passion for its director, Hugh Allen . Later in her time at Oxford, she became attracted to a fellow student named Roy Ridley , later chaplain of Balliol , on whose appearance and manner she later drew for her best-known character, Lord Peter Wimsey . She studied diligently, with
10920-424: The more interesting for that". The writer Mary Ellen Chase thought that Sayers had never been conventionally beautiful and after attending one of her lectures in the 1930s, she wrote "There can be few plainer women on earth than Dorothy Sayers [but] I have never come across one so magnetic to listen to". In 1931 Sayers collaborated with Detection Club colleagues on a longer serial for the BBC, The Scoop , and on
11050-678: The most complete remains of a dodo found anywhere in the world. It also hosts the Simonyi Professorship of the Public Understanding of Science , currently held by Marcus du Sautoy . Adjoining the Museum of Natural History is the Pitt Rivers Museum , founded in 1884, which displays the university's archaeological and anthropological collections, currently holding over 500,000 items. It recently built
11180-444: The nature of God's mind. Between 1944 and 1949 she published two volumes of essays and a collection of stories for children, and wrote another religious play, The Just Vengeance , commissioned for the 750th anniversary celebrations of Lichfield Cathedral , which, she later said, was "very stale and abstract" and pleased theologians more than it pleased the actors. Oxford Oxford ( / ˈ ɒ k s f ər d / )
11310-441: The noble sleuth again"; "We had hardly thought a woman writer could be so robustly gruesome ... a very diverting problem"; "First-rate construction ... a thoroughly satisfactory yarn from start to finish". Sayers's relationship with Cournos continued until 1922. It remained unconsummated because Cournos did not want children and Sayers refused, for religious reasons, to use contraception. After that affair ended she met
11440-462: The novel The Floating Admiral in 1931. From the mid‐1930s Sayers wrote plays, mostly on religious themes; they were performed in English cathedrals and broadcast by the BBC . Her radio dramatisation of the life of Jesus, The Man Born to Be King (1941–42), initially provoked controversy but was quickly recognised as an important work. From the early 1940s her main preoccupation was translating
11570-416: The original ( Didcot ) route is still in use for its full length, portions of the others remain. There were also routes to the north and west. The line to Banbury was opened in 1850, and was extended to Birmingham Snow Hill in 1852; a route to Worcester opened in 1853. A branch to Witney was opened in 1862, which was extended to Fairford in 1873. The line to Witney and Fairford closed in 1962, but
11700-755: The others remain open. Oxford was historically an important port on the River Thames , with this section of the river being called the Isis ; the Oxford-Burcot Commission in the 17th century attempted to improve navigation to Oxford. Iffley Lock and Osney Lock lie within the bounds of the city. In the 18th century the Oxford Canal was built to connect Oxford with the Midlands . Commercial traffic has given way to recreational use of
11830-411: The pages of tomorrow's newspaper. I saw it, that is, as a judgment of fact, unaffected by its period, unaffected by its literary or dogmatic origins and I recognised at the same moment that the judgment was true. She thought Dante was "simply the most incomparable story-teller who ever set pen to paper", and in addition to the parallels of the world during war, she believed that her society suffered from
11960-519: The pool of Oxford University students and graduates, and, especially for EFL education , use their Oxford location as a selling point. Oxford has numerous major tourist attractions, many belonging to the university and colleges. As well as several famous institutions, the town centre is home to Carfax Tower and the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, both of which offer views over
12090-906: The rector and his wife differently: he was scholarly and self-effacing; she, like many of the Leigh family—including her great-uncle Percival Leigh , a contributor to the humorous magazine Punch —was outgoing and gregarious and she missed the stimulation of Oxford society. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), Catherine Kenney writes that the lack of siblings and neighbouring children of her own age or class made Sayers's childhood fairly solitary, although her parents were loving and attentive. Sayers formed one lasting friendship in these years: Ivy Shrimpton, eight years her senior, her first cousin as Nell's niece. Shrimpton, raised in California as an infant but educated in an Anglican convent school in Oxford, made extended visits to
12220-455: The rest of their lives. In that year she published Tristan in Brittany , a verse-and-prose translation of the 12th-century poetic fragments of The Romance of Tristan by Thomas of Britain . The scholar George Saintsbury wrote an introduction to the book, and Sayers was praised for making a historically important poem available for the first time in modern English. In 1930 Sayers became
12350-518: The river and canal. Oxford was the original base of Salters Steamers (founded in 1858), which was a leading racing-boatbuilder that played an important role in popularising pleasure boating on the Upper Thames. The firm runs a regular service from Folly Bridge downstream to Abingdon and beyond. Oxford's central location on several transport routes means that it has long been a crossroads city with many coaching inns , although road traffic
12480-458: The second highest percentage of people cycling to work. Oxford railway station is half a mile (about 1 km) west of the city centre. The station is served by CrossCountry services to Bournemouth and Manchester Piccadilly ; Great Western Railway (who manage the station) services to London Paddington , Banbury and Hereford ; and Chiltern Railways services to London Marylebone . Oxford has had three main railway stations. The first
12610-424: The series. Financial necessity, however, led the author to write another five Wimsey novels to provide her with a good income before they were eventually betrothed. Brabazon describes Harriet as Sayers's alter ego , sharing many attributes—favourable and otherwise—with the author. Harriet is described by Wimsey's mother as "so interesting and a really remarkable face, though perhaps not strictly good-looking, and all
12740-564: The specialist further and higher education institution Ruskin College that is part of the University of West London in Oxford. The Islamic Azad University also has a campus near Oxford. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world, and one of the most prestigious higher education institutions of the world, averaging nine applications to every available place, and attracting 40% of its academic staff and 17% of undergraduates from overseas. In September 2016, it
12870-532: The spires of the city. Many tourists shop at the historic Covered Market . In the summer, punting on the Thames / Isis and the Cherwell is a common practice. As well as being a major draw for tourists (9.1 million in 2008, similar in 2009) , Oxford city centre has many shops, several theatres and an ice rink. There are two small shopping malls in the city centre: the Clarendon Centre and
13000-400: The terms of her will, he stands to inherit most of her substantial fortune (money sorely needed by his grandsons, Robert and George Fentiman). However, should the General die first, nearly everything will go to Lady Dormer's companion Ann Dorland. Lady Dormer dies the next morning, Armistice Day , and that afternoon the General is found dead in his armchair at the Bellona Club. Dr Penberthy,
13130-585: The three books of Dante 's Divine Comedy into colloquial English. She died unexpectedly at her home in Essex , aged 64, before completing the third book. Sayers was born on 13 June 1893 at the Old Choir House in Brewer Street, Oxford ; she was the only child of the Rev Henry Sayers and his wife Helen "Nell" Mary, née Leigh. Henry Sayers, born at Tittleshall , Norfolk, was the son of
13260-523: The time, until I had panted my way through the Three Realms of the Dead from top to bottom and from bottom to top. As well as her work on Dante, Sayers continued to write drama. At the BBC's request she created a cycle of twelve radio plays portraying the life of Jesus , The Man Born to Be King (1941–42), which, Kenney observes, were broadcast to "a huge audience of Britons during the darkest days of
13390-660: The town. A heavily ecclesiastical town, Oxford was greatly affected by the changes of the English Reformation , emerging as the seat of a bishopric and a full-fledged city. During the English Civil War , Oxford housed the court of Charles I and stood at the heart of national affairs. The city began to grow industrially during the 19th century, and had an industrial boom in the early 20th century, with major printing and car-manufacturing industries. These declined, along with other British heavy industry, in
13520-456: The truth from her. Wimsey works out what had happened. When the General had consulted Dr Penberthy after seeing his sister, he had mentioned that under the terms of the will Ann Dorland would not inherit if Lady Dormer were to die before he did. To ensure that that did not happen, Penberthy prescribed the General a massive dose of digitalis, to be taken later that evening when Penberthy would not be in attendance. Contriving to be present later when
13650-615: The upper reaches of the River Thames at its confluence with the River Cherwell , the town grew in national importance during the early Norman period , and in the late 12th century became home to the fledgling University of Oxford . The city was besieged during The Anarchy in 1142. During the Middle Ages Oxford had an important Jewish community, of which David of Oxford and his wife Licoricia of Winchester were prominent members. The university rose to dominate
13780-591: The village of Binsey , along with several smaller portions on the fringes. Other landscape features and places of interest covered include Cutteslowe Park and the mini railway attraction, the University Parks , Hogacre Common Eco Park, numerous sports grounds, Aston's Eyot , St Margaret 's Church and well, and Wolvercote Common and community orchard. There are two tiers of local government covering Oxford, at district and county level: Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council . From 1889 to 1974
13910-415: The violin and the viola in the school orchestra and forming highly charged friendships. Despite some excellent teachers, Sayers was not happy at the school. Joining at the age of fifteen, rather than the school's normal starting age of eight, she was seen as an outsider by some of the other girls, and not all the staff approved of her independence of mind. As an Anglican with strong high-church views, she
14040-468: The voice of our Divine Saviour and Redeemer" and declared, "to impersonate the Divine Son of God in this way is an act of irreverence bordering on the blasphemous ". The actor Robert Speaight , who played Jesus, said the plays were successful because "we did not approach the parts in a reverential frame of mind. We approached them exactly as if it was any other kind of play". As the series progressed,
14170-462: The writer Evelyn Waugh contrasted Sayers and Christie: Mrs Christie, on the whole, concentrates her ingenuity on a kind of three card trick , "spot the villain", and even exercises a kind of mesmeric influence on the reader in diverting his attention from the significant details. Miss Sayers, on the other hand, devotes herself more to devising unexpected mechanisms of crime and in creating characters who are of real personal interest quite apart from
14300-539: Was Behind the Screen (1930) in which six club members took it in turn to read their own fifteen-minute episodes of a crime mystery on BBC radio. Sayers published two novels in 1930. Prompted by a suggestion from a fellow author, Robert Eustace , she worked on The Documents in the Case . Eustace, a medical practitioner, provided the main plot device and scientific details; Sayers turned them into prose, hoping to write
14430-426: Was Boswell's , founded in 1738. The store closed in 2020. St Aldate's has few shops but several local government buildings, including the town hall , the city police station and local council offices. The High (the word street is traditionally omitted) is the longest of the four streets and has a number of independent and high-end chain stores, but mostly university and college buildings. The historic buildings mean
14560-412: Was 1788, with 336.7 mm (13.26 in) of rainfall. The wettest year was 2012, with 979.5 mm (38.56 in). The wettest month on record was September 1774, with a total fall of 223.9 mm (8.81 in). The warmest month on record is July 1983, with an average of 21.1 °C (70 °F) and the coldest is January 1963, with an average of −3.0 °C (27 °F). The warmest year on record
14690-555: Was also available but closed in April 2009; a service operated by That's TV , originally called That's Oxford (now That's Oxfordshire), took to the airwaves in 2015. The city is home to a BBC Television newsroom which produces an opt-out from the main South Today programme broadcast from Southampton . Local papers include The Oxford Times (compact; weekly), its sister papers the Oxford Mail ( tabloid ; daily) and
14820-564: Was co-founder, with Amphilis Middlemore and Charis Ursula Barnett , of the Mutual Admiration Society , a literary society where female students would read and critique each other's work. Sayers gave the group its name, remarking, "if we didn't give ourselves that title, the rest of College would". The society was a forerunner of the Inklings , the informal literary discussion group at Oxford; Sayers never belonged to
14950-619: Was erected in 1678–1683 to house a cabinet of curiosities given to the University of Oxford in 1677. The museum reopened in 2009 after a major redevelopment. It holds significant collections of art and archaeology, including works by Michelangelo , Leonardo da Vinci , Turner , and Picasso , as well as treasures such as the Scorpion Macehead , the Parian Marble and the Alfred Jewel . It also contains " The Messiah ",
15080-529: Was established in 1990, and the Begbroke Science Park , owned by the university, lies north of the city. Oxford increasingly has a reputation for being a centre of digital innovation, as epitomized by Digital Oxford. Several startups including Passle, Brainomix, Labstep, and more, are based in Oxford. The presence of the university has also led to Oxford becoming a centre for the education industry. Companies often draw their teaching staff from
15210-527: Was established in the city in 1910. The principal production site for Mini cars, owned by BMW since 2000, is in the Oxford suburb of Cowley . The plant, which survived the turbulent years of British Leyland in the 1970s and was threatened with closure in the early 1990s, also produced cars under the Austin and Rover brands following the demise of the Morris brand in 1984, although the last Morris-badged car
15340-592: Was founded in 1743 by Richard Tawney. He formed a partnership in 1782 with Mark and James Morrell, who eventually became the owners. After an acrimonious family dispute the brewery was closed in 1998. The beer brand names were taken over by the Thomas Hardy Burtonwood brewery, while the 132 tied pubs were bought by Michael Cannon, owner of the American hamburger chain Fuddruckers , through
15470-490: Was her alleged "special," and nothing would content her but fact. There was, however, a lighter side to this impressive character. Long and slim in those days, small head held alert on slender neck, she loped round Oxford looking for fun. The post with Blackwell lasted for two years, after which Sayers moved to France. She was engaged in 1919 by a school near Verneuil-sur-Avre in Normandy as assistant to Eric Whelpton , who
15600-537: Was not forthcoming and the script was altered; according to her biographer David Coomes, the Wimsey character "looked like a member of the Mafia". Sayers was growing tired of the solitary vocation of a novelist, and was glad to collaborate with her old university friend Byrne on a new Wimsey story written for the theatre. Busman's Honeymoon , "a detective comedy in three acts", had a short provincial tour before opening in
15730-565: Was opened at Grandpont in 1844, but this was a terminus, inconvenient for routes to the north; it was replaced by the present station on Park End Street in 1852 with the opening of the Birmingham route. Another terminus, at Rewley Road , was opened in 1851 to serve the Bletchley route; this station closed in 1951. There have also been a number of local railway stations, all of which are now closed. A fourth station, Oxford Parkway ,
15860-581: Was produced there in 1982. Oxford University Press , a department of the University of Oxford , is based in the city, although it no longer operates its own paper mill and printing house. The city is also home to the UK operations of Wiley-Blackwell , Elsevier and several smaller publishing houses. The presence of the university has given rise to many science and technology based businesses, including Oxford Instruments , Research Machines and Sophos . The university established Isis Innovation in 1987 to promote technology transfer. The Oxford Science Park
15990-467: Was published in 1923, to mixed reviews; one critic thought it a "somewhat complicated mystery ... clever but crude", and another found the aristocratic Wimsey unconvincing as a detective and the story "a poor specimen of sensationalism ". Some other reviews were more favourable: "the solution does not, as is so often the case, come as an anti-climax to disappoint expectations and lead the reader to feel that he has been 'had' ... We hope to hear from
16120-468: Was published in 1923. Between then and 1939 she wrote ten more novels featuring the upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey . In 1930, in Strong Poison , she introduced a leading female character, Harriet Vane , the object of Wimsey's love. Harriet appears sporadically in future novels, resisting Lord Peter's proposals of marriage until Gaudy Night in 1935, six novels later. Sayers moved
16250-586: Was ranked as the world's number one university, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings . Oxford is renowned for its tutorial -based method of teaching. The University of Oxford maintains the largest university library system in the United Kingdom, and, with over 11 million volumes housed on 120 miles (190 km) of shelving, the Bodleian group is the second-largest library in
16380-416: Was repelled by the form of Christianity practised at Godolphin, described by her biographer James Brabazon as "a low-church pietism , drab and mealy-mouthed", which came close to putting her off religion completely. During an outbreak of measles at the school in 1911 Sayers nearly died. Her mother was allowed to stay at the school, where she nursed her daughter, who recovered in time to study and sit for
16510-410: Was seven, and she had lessons from governesses in other subjects, including French and German. In January 1909, when she was fifteen, her parents sent her to Godolphin School , a boarding school in Salisbury . Her biographer Barbara Reynolds writes that Sayers took a lively part in the life of the school, acting in plays, some of which she wrote and produced herself, singing (sometimes solo), playing
16640-469: Was teaching English there. She had been in love with him at Oxford, and he was among the models for the appearance and character of Wimsey. In 1921 Sayers returned to London, accepted a teaching position with a girls' school in Acton, London , and began a relationship with a fellow writer, John Cournos . The affair was intense and lasted until October 1922 when Cournos left the country. In 1922 Sayers took
16770-585: Was well received. The Scotsman called it a book to "keep a jaded reviewer out of bed in the small hours"; The Times said that the final twist "is really startling and ingenious, and though the reader is given a perfectly fair chance of guessing it none but the most ingenious can hope to do so"; and the reviewer in The Liverpool Echo called Sayers "the greatest of all detective story writers", though worried that her plots were so clever that some readers might struggle to keep up with them. Over
16900-617: Was −17.8 °C (0.0 °F) on 24 December 1860. The highest temperature ever recorded in Oxford is 38.1 °C (101 °F) on 19 July 2022. The average conditions below are from the Radcliffe Meteorological Station . It has the longest series of temperature and rainfall records for one site in Britain . These records are continuous from January 1815. Irregular observations of rainfall, cloud cover, and temperature exist since 1767. The driest year on record
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