Oxford–the city, not the university–figures in my memories from all stages of my life. In fact, my connection to the town predates my memory. When I was a colicky baby, my parents rented a house in Oxford one summer that came with its own punt–one of the flat, polled boats that are common on Oxford’s two placid rivers. Apparently, I was happy only when lying on my stomach at the bottom of the punt.
When I was between seven and ten, we lived for several long periods in London. My father, a British historian, could make good use of the books and papers in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. We took family day-trips to Oxford that developed certain routines. We would go to a pet store in Oxford’s Victorian covered market, buy dry food appropriate for deer, and feed them in the park of Magdalen (pronounced “Maudlin”) College. The Magdalen park is stocked with short English roe deer and surrounded by a bend in the Cherwell River along which Joseph Addison liked to walk in the 18th century. The gothic towers of Madgalen (ancient and quaint even in Addison’s day) rise above the grass and water.