Real Oxford

de Patrick McGuinness

The real Oxford is rarely seen, even by those who live here. There's industrial Oxford, and 'car city' Oxford, once home to the biggest car plant in the world. There are the factories and breweries, wharves and stations of a midlands city, with its venerable football history and unexpectedly radical politics. There's high-rise Oxford as well as honeyed stone Oxford. The Oxford of OX2, where life expectancy is among the highest in the UK, and the Oxford of OX4, where its among the lowest. There is the Oxford of dark histories whose libraries, buildings and bequests come from slavery and colonial exploitation. The Oxford that broadcasts its achievements, and the Oxford that covers its tracks... Novelist, poet and Oxford academic Patrick McGuinness guides us through the past, but also the present, of those interlinked Oxfords. He walks the city from the station to the ringroad, tracks its canals and towpaths, its footbridges and tunnels, to evoke the continued presence of the Oxford behind the postcard views.