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December 2013

Going Gently into the Good Night

South Oxford has always had a sad air of limp curtains and cooked cabbage about it; stalwart respectability and dullness, a look of pre-war utility and just “getting on with it”. Down the Abingdon Road, parallel to the river on the left, where the university scullers practise,  lie watermeadows that flood in the winter; on […] Read more

Woodstock’s Soul Food

“If books are part of the soul of any house, then bookshops are the equivalent for a town” (Alexander McAll Smith). Rachel Phipps’  pocket-sized  Woodstock Bookshop has become a hub of literary interest in a few short years.  It confounds the pessimistic (some would say realistic) view that independent bookshops are doomed. But a thriving […] Read more