Paula Byrne

When Oxford life resembled a great satirical novel

Sardonic dons, their eccentric wives and ‘satanic’ undergraduates all figure in Daisy Dunn’s vivid portrait of the university between the wars

Maurice Bowra was hugely popular with undergraduates, charming them with his wit and expertise. [Getty Images] 
issue 19 March 2022

Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford friend Harold Acton, immortalised as Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited, once bumped into the wife of John Beazley, a lecturer in ancient Greek pottery, while she was exercising their pet goose in Christ Church’s Tom Quad. Hopping over the bird, Acton intuitively doffed his hat. Here, Marie Beazley declared, was ‘a true gentleman’.

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