I went to Oxford with my Mum, a city I’d not been to in years. It’s been on my to-sketch list for some time. We stayed at the Randolph Hotel in the city centre, which is where Colin Dexter wrote the Inspector Morse books, in the hotel bar. That bar is called the Morse Bar now, and the drinks all have Morse-themed names, pictures of John Thaw are all over the walls. I’ll tell you, before that trip I didn’t know who Colin Dexter was, and while of course I knew the Inspector Morse TV show (it’s really famous after all), I didn’t used to watch it, and can’t remember what the famous theme tune was. I know it was set in Oxford, and that his partner was that guy who played Neville in Auf Wiedersehen Pet. So I picked up a copy of the first Morse book from Blackstones (who had a first edition of the book, Last Bus To Woodstock, behind the counter) with the intention of reading it in that bar over a fancy drink, but I didn’t actually start reading it until after I got back to the US (I was still reading an Agatha Christie book, Lord Edgware Dies, and I’m a very slow reader). The book was pretty good, I didn’t feel like reading more in the series just yet. I did get out and draw before dinner, sketching the timber-framed buildings on Cornmarket. It was pretty busy in Oxford, this is a tourist centre, lot of people about. I saw a nearly-fight between one drunk guy and a busker, I think the drunk guy knew the busker because he kept calling him specific names. I had a conversation with one bloke who was really interested in learning how to draw and was asking me for advice, hopefully I gave good advice. Hopefully I was following it myself. I think the building I drew is actually a hat shop. This was page 1 (or spread 1) of a new sketchbook, the portrait format Hahnemuhle watercolour book. I really like their paper.

This is one of the most famous sites in Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera. I got up early to go and sketch it before the crowds came, and had a really nice view in some warm morning light. That iconic stone you see all over Oxford, which is called Headington stone, exudes a warm and highly academic feel. The amount of clever that has seeped into these stones over the years has probably supercharged it with particles of extreme knowledge. If you put your ear up to the walls you can just about hear the theme tune to University Challenge. Radcliffe Camera is a big circular library, and the building was completed in 1748. It’s not open to the public, but I saw quite a few academics going in. I believe it is part of the Bodleian Libraries; we had wanted to do a your of the Bodleian, but couldn’t get a reservation. It looked pretty incredible. I love libraries, I mean I know people all say that, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate them and apparently want them gone. I love public libraries, but I love a university library and spent so much of my twenties in them; I miss that quiet, spending all day hidden away there researching. I wonder if I would have done well if I had been a student at Oxford, or Cambridge, or Oxbridge wherever that is. I don’t know. I like to think I would have, but then I get bored with the mandatory training videos at work and I spend a month reading an Agatha Christie novel and I wonder if I ever really did have the mind for serious academia. Who knows. If life had taken a different path maybe I would be organizing ‘Let’s Draw Oxford’ sketchcrawls around the old cobbled paths. I still ended up working for a university in a college town full of bikes. As I sketched the Radcliffe Camera, morning tour groups were already passing by telling their stories to American and Chinese tourists. Radcliffe Square and its Camera are named after the 17th century physician and MP John Radcliffe, who treated King George III, and whose money helped found the library after his death. It sits in between Brasenose College and All Souls College. Just around the corner from there crossing over New College Lane is another of Oxford’s most famous sights, the Bridge of Sighs, which I sketched below (much more quickly in pencil and paint, while walking around the area with my Mum). Unlike the similarly named bridge in Venice this one does not go over a canal. Cambridge has a Bridge of Sighs too, and that one goes over the river Cam. The proper name of this one is Hertford Bridge (being connected to Hertford College).

I could spend weeks sketching around Oxford. When I retire, if my eyes and hands still work by then, maybe that’s what I’ll do. I bought a really good book of Oxford drawings at the second hand bookshop in Davis which I read to give me inspiration, and I’ve seen a lot of travelling urban sketchers drawing these same buildings and giving workshops there. It’s an attractive city. I think if we lived in England again it’s a city I’d want to live in, although I do have a soft spot for Cambridge. On the drive in, we passed through one suburb of Oxford and I saw out of the corner of my eye that house with the big metal shark sticking out of the roof. I didn’t draw it, but having seen it only online I was so excited to see it in person.

Here is a sketch of another interesting detail, the Tumnus doorway. I don’t know if it is actually called that, but that’s what it is, a big wooden door with two gilded fauns holding up the awnings around it. The fauns look exactly as you imagine Mr Tumnus from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and of course CS Lewis was a professor here in Oxford (and used to meet regularly with JRR Tolkien at the Eagle and Child, which currently is not open). This used to be the City Arms pub in centuries past, closing in 1881, and the building is now part of Brasenose College. On the wooden door is the face of a lion. Now I don’t know if Lewis saw these and thought, yeah I’ll have that, but it might have been an inspiration for him, maybe passing up here on a snowy evening lit by gaslamp. I loved that story, and adapted it for the stage when I was in France decades ago.

Now these last two sketches are quick ones I drew while exploring the Ashmolean Museum, across the street form our hotel. The big head above is about 2000 years old, probably the head of Apollo (the Greek god, not the boxer from Rocky). The smaller head below is a lot older, the skull of Homo Georgicus, about 1.8 million years old and found in Georgia (the country in the Caucasus, not the state in the deep South). As I drew it I couldn’t get the voice of George from Rainbow out of my mind, imagining the skull talking with that voice, “Oh Geoffrey, Zippy has been so naughty”. I really enjoyed the Ashmolean Museum, but we didn’t stay too long. It was a brief visit to Oxford, and I’d like to go back some time. We did stop off at the Trout Inn, a beautiful pub by the river Thames just outside Oxford, which I knew from the Philip Pullman books (specifically La Belle Sauvage, it’s where the main character of that book, Malcolm, lives with his parents). If I ever go back to Oxford I’d like to go back there for lunch.