Of all the wives of Henry VIII, Katherine Parr may be the one most interesting to modern women and quite possibly the most intelligent. Brilliant, charming, politically astute, and deeply educated,
The once formidable Oxford Castle saw sieges, standoffs, and one very good escape story. Now it’s barely there. It stood on Castle Street. Today, you’re left with a mound and St.
Oxford University didn’t appear fully formed. There’s no founding moment, no neat origin story. It grew slowly, unevenly, and without much coordination. Scholars were gathering here by the 10th century.
Oxford is a beautiful and bustling university town. It’s a 1,000 year old scholarly city with film set grandeur and ambience. Oxford is home to the world’s oldest English-speaking university.
The Bodleian Library is Oxford’s intellectual center of gravity. It’s been there since 1602, quietly accumulating books while the rest of the world moved on. Today, it’s one of the
Godstow Abbey: lost treasure or just a ruin? I assumed it was gone. It isn’t. About four miles outside Oxford, the remains of Godstow Abbey sit quietly by the Thames. What’s left
London has its heavy hitters: the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum. You’ve seen the crowds, the bottlenecks, the phones held aloft. But that’s only part of the picture.
The Pre-Raphaelites were a band of Victorian radicals inspired by medieval art, poetry, and the natural world. They set out to shake up the stiff conventions of the British art
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the artist who defined its distinctive look. With his luminous muses, lush color, and layered symbolism, Rossetti created some
Most museums display objects behind glass. House museums are different. They let you step into the rooms where remarkable people actually lived and worked. Some were the homes of artists