VIEWS | 230K. Top 10 Most-Read Posts in Last Month.

October 18, 2017 – This blog has had 230,000 page views since inception.

Thank you for reading!

The ten most-viewed posts in the last month are shown below, with dates and links.

Post Title and Link, and Date

HITLER: Why Didn't He Bomb Oxford? (24K Views, Sep... Jun 8, 2013, 3 comments

ROWING BLAZERS: Ralph Lauren Launch, Carlson's Boo... Sep 24, 2014

WOMEN AT OXFORD | Rhodes, Trinity, St Benet's Sep 18, 2017

OXFORD MUSIC: Schola Cantorum in NYC at Trinity Ch... Sep 16, 2014

OXFORD IN FICTION: Top Six Fictional Colleges (Upd... Jul 2, 2016

TRINITY | Alumni Weekend Sep 17, 2017, 2 comments

OXFORD IN WW2 | Felicity Tholstrup Oct 6, 2017

HERALDRY: The College of Arms and Windsor Herald Aug 15, 2015

OXFORD OPEN DAY | Selling the Colleges, 2017 Oct 9, 2017

OXFORD | Russian Heritage Sep 24, 2017

OXFORD IN WW2 | Felicity Tholstrup

Third stop of the tour, on the Turl, after the Weston Library and Old Bodleian.

At the Oxford Alumni Weekend five years ago Alice and I were privileged to go on a tour of New College led by Felicity Tholstrup, a five-star Oxford tour guide.

She has been offering her "Hidden Oxford" tours since 2002.

One comment Felicity made on the 2012 tour was how long New College's treasures have survived intact. 

She noted that nothing in Oxford was damaged by the Baedeker bombing during World War 2, and Hitler appeared to have removed Oxford as a target. 

A Chronicle of Wartime Trinity
College, Oxford.

This inspired me to post a commentary on the topic that has attracted 24,000 views.


World War II at Oxford

Partly because of the strong interest in this post, I did further research. I read a book by John Harper-Nelson (Trinity, Oxon. 1940), Oxford at War (Northbridge, Western Australia: Access Press, 1996), which shows the impact of World War 2 on the author's abbreviated undergraduate life at Oxford in 1940-42, at Trinity.

With all the undergraduates joining up to defend their country, Trinity had a second-year class in 1941-42 of just 29 students. Oxford offered students a certificate after one year, allowing them to continue their studies after the war ended and they were discharged from the military.

Oxford also offered short courses for military personnel, including for Canadians from nearby bases.

So last month I jumped at the chance to go on another tour led by Felicity, looking at Oxford in World War 2.

Stop 1. Weston Library

The tour started in front of the Weston Library – what we used to call the "New Bodleian" before the building was replaced through the generosity of several large donors and many small ones. 

One of the large donors was Julian Blackwell of the Blackwell's Book Shop, whose donation of £5 million to the renovation was announced in 2008.

In St Giles, in front of St John's.

Stop 2. Old Bod

We crossed the road to see the Old Bodleian, and Felicity spoke about the Oxonians involved with the Bletchley Park research that led to the breaking of Germany's Enigma coding machine.

The most famous man at Bletchley Park's cryptography unit was surely Alan Turing, credited with inventing the modern computer. He was recruited by the first project leaders people at Bletchley Park, Dilly Knox and Tony Kendrick.

Other key leaders included Peter Twinn and Gordon Welchman.


They nabbed all the students who were studying mathematics at Oxford and pulled strings to have them shunted off the path to the infantry, to work instead on defeating the Enigma.

That's Felicity on the left, with her attentive tour group.

The project was successful as of January 1940, and for the rest of the war British intelligence intercepted many German messages, shortening the war on the European front.

(A former neighbor, the late Tom Collins, nicknamed "Sam Scram" by his British associates, was the person who accompanied the Dragon 1 computer in 1942. This was an American contribution to the project to defeat the German Enigma machine. He stayed in Bletchley Park for a year but was not allowed to talk about his role for another 30 years.)


The Oxonians working on Bletchley Park projects included Maurice Allen, a don; J. W. B. Barns, an Oxford Professor of Egyptology, who worked in Hut 4, Hut 5 and Block A; Geoffrey Barraclough, Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford; Hilary Brett or Brett-Smith (Lady Hinsley), from Somerville College, a cryptologist in Hut 8; Lord Asa Briggs, member of the Watch in Hut 6, an historian elected a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford (1945–55) after the war; and Nakdimon ("Naky") Doniach, RAF, linguist (later GCHQ and Oxford).

Stop 3. The Turl. What the Oxford Staff Worked On

We moved on to the Turl and Felicity discussed what happened to the staff and some of the colleges. 

As the students went to war, one-fourth of the dons were recruited for Whitehall jobs. 

Some research was continued, some stepped up for wartime purposes: 

• Penicillin was extracted and purified by an Oxford team (Florey, Chain and Heatley) and was then produced in the United States.
• Penicillin was first used at a pop-up St Hugh's hospital and next door at the Radcliffe Infirmary, reducing the death rate for head injuries from 50 percent in World War I to 5 percent in World War II.
• Neurosurgery was advanced at St Hugh's under the team of Ritchie Russell, Hugh Cairns and Freda Newcombe.
• Another team worked on ship and aircraft radar.
• Another worked on development of a more portable form of anesthetics for mobile operating teams.
• Another team pioneered in use of organ transplants.

Stop 4. St John's, and How the Colleges Were Transformed

We stopped in front of St John's and the back entrance of Balliol. Here's how some of the colleges were used during the war:

Balliol was a center for research on foreign intelligence for the Foreign Office.

Brasenose's facilities were formally requisitioned for a series of government offices, and the students moved in with Christ Church. Hugh Last, Professor of Ancient History at the College, was put to work on Bletchley Park projects.

Merton was used as a center for transport administration. One of its famed history professors, Hugh Trevor-Roper, was given responsibilities for research for MI5 on radio security.

Oriel was a center for War Office intelligence.

Queen's College was dedicated to home security issues.

St Hugh's as mentioned became a neurosurgery center with 300 beds, processing 13,000 patients during the war. Patients were flown to the Brize Norton air force base and transported to St Hugh's by ambulance.

St John's was turned over to the the Food and Fisheries administration.

Hat tip to Felicity Thorstrup for helping me with details after the tour, especially information on what the colleges were doing to help the war effort.

OXFORD | Russian Heritage

Dr Nina Kruglikova at
Weston Library, Oxford.

What would the main themes be of a Russian Heritage tour of Oxford? 

I asked Nina Kruglikova, a fellow Trinity College, Oxford alum whom I met on a tour led by Felicity Tholstrup of WW2 Oxford earlier this month on the Oxford Weekend. 

Here are some topics for a Russian Heritage tour, which Nina has conducted in the past.

17th Century – Visit to Oxford from Peter the Great. Tsar Peter I ("the Great"), founder of St Petersburg, was born in 1672 and became emperor at ten years of age. He ruled for 43 years. 

He visited Oxford, incognito, staying at the Golden Cross and visiting the Chapel at Trinity College. Even though he was in disguise, he cut such a figure that he attracted attention.

19th Century – Visit from Alexander I. Emperor Alexander (1777-1825) went to Radcliffe Camera to celebrate the victory over Napoleon in 1814. He stayed in the Queen's Room in Merton (where the wife of Charles I lived during the period before Cromwell prevailed over the monarchy). He gave a big vase from Suberia and also a double-headed eagle in a stained-glass window, the arms of the Tsar. One legend is that Alexander caused damage during his visit and the vase and window were repayment.

Peter I ("The Great")

20th Century (A) – Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov. Yusupov (1887-1967), who as a youth went under the title Count Sumarokov-Elston (Князь Фе́ликс Фе́ликсович Юсу́пов, Граф Сумаро́ков-Эльстон) was for three years, 1909-12, at University College, Oxford. He had lavish parties at Univ. For example, he brought in a famed Russian ballet dancer named Pavlova (a cake is named after her). His best friend from St. Petersburg, Oswald Raynor, was at Oriel.

At the end of his student years at Oxford he was reported to have visited Royal Albert Hall for a full-dress event and to have impressed many onlookers as the best-dressed person in the Hall. Five years later he went to the United States and was depicted in a thinly fictionalized film as having raped his wife. He sued the film company and won.

He is credited along with the Tsar's cousin Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich with killing Father Grigori Yefimovich (Gregory) 1869-1916, the "mad Monk" friend of the family of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra. Rasputin died at Yusupov's home; he did not eat the cyanide-laced cookies so he was shot in the head.

Nicolas II – Nice man,
bad tsar.

Yusupov and his wife Irina migrated to England after the assassination of Tsar Nicholas with his wife and five children in 1918. 

There were two revolutions in 1917. The first was by the democratic Duma ruling committee, in February. The Duma forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate, ending three centuries of Romanov rule. 

It would be another half a year before the Bolshevik (October) Revolution.  government was formed, after the Socialist revolution in late autumn 1917.

Yusupov and his wife bought a house at 4 Marston Street, Oxford that is now called St Nicholas House. They were interviewed about his 1953 book, Lost Splendor. Prince Yusupov died at St Pancras Hospital in 1963 and is buried at Headington Cemetery outside of Oxford. 

The influence and origins of Rasputin continue to be a mystery, so that when Yusupov died there was interest in his personal papers; however, he apparently burned them.

20th Century (B) – Charles Sydney Gibbes. Son of John Gibbs (sic – he added the "e" later in life), he did the Moral Sciences Tripos at St John's College, Cambridge. He became the tutor to the children of Tsar Nicholas II. He was deeply distressed a perceived betrayal of the Tsar by his British relatives, but the Great War was going so badly that all of the countries were fearful of revolution. One view is that George V's wife Mary was hostile to the Tsar's family because they lorded over her at Osborne on the Isle of Wight when Victoria was still alive. After Nicholas II and his family were assassinated, Gibbes first became a monk and then became an Orthodox priest in Oxford, taking the name Nicholas out of respect for the Tsar and his family.

20th Century (C) – Leonid Pasternak. The father of Boris Pasternak, Leonid lived in Park Town, Oxford. He was an artist and his house is now a museum, full of his paintings.

21st Century – St Nicholas Church. The church that Nina and other Russian Orthodox faithful attend is at the previously mentioned #4 Marston Road (St Nicholas House), near the intersection with Ferry Road. It used to be the Anglican church of St Nicholas. They have Sunday services from 10:30 until 1:30 pm or later.