The sad decline of Oxford

The cliché about Oxford – and as a resident of the city, I have skin in the game here – is that it’s the most beautiful city in Britain. Think of all the writers and poets who have rhapsodised about its glories, from Evelyn Waugh immortalising (some would say fossilising) it in Brideshead Revisited to Matthew Arnold’s famous description of it in his poem ‘Thyrsis’ as ‘that sweet city with her dreaming spires/She needs not June for beauty’s heightening’. It has more Grade I listed buildings in its centre than anywhere of a similar size and has innumerable architectural wonders. The incomparable Radcliffe Camera stands at its heart – often described as the most striking public building in England. So why is so much of Oxford being not merely neglected, but positively ruined?   

I’m with Bill Bryson on the besmirching of Oxford. In his Notes from a Small Island, Bryson wrote despairingly:

You tell me that it is one of the most beautiful, well-preserved cities in the world? I’m afraid not.