Oxford thought it was at war. And then it was. After the horrors of the First World War, Oxford looked like an Arcadia - a dreamworld - from which pain could be shut out. Soldiers arrived with pictures of the university fully formed in their heads, and women finally won the right to earn degrees. Freedom meant reading beneath the spires and punting down the river with champagne picnics. But all was not quite as it seemed. Boys fresh from school settled into lecture rooms alongside men who had returned from the trenches with the beginnings of shellshock. It was displacing to be surrounded by aristocrats who liked nothing better than to burn furniture from each other's rooms on the college quads for kicks. The women of Oxford still faced a battle to emerge from their shadows. And among the dons a major conflict was beginning to brew. Set in the world that Evelyn Waugh immortalised in Brideshead Revisited, this is a true and often funny story of the thriving of knowledge and spirit of fun and foreboding that characterised Oxford between the two world wars. One of the protagonists, in fact, was a friend of Waugh and inspired a character in his novel. Another married into the family who inhabited Castle Howard and befriended everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Virginia Woolf. The third was an Irish occultist and correspondent with the poets W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and W. B. Yeats. This singular tale of Oxford colleagues and rivals encapsulates the false sense of security that developed across the country in the interwar years. With the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich came the subversion of history for propaganda. In academic Oxford, the fight was on not only to preserve the past from the hands of the Nazis, but also to triumph, one don over another, as they became embroiled in a war of their own.; 304 pages; Published: 31/03/2022
FREE DELIVERY FOR ORDERS OVER £40
We aim to process and dispatch our orders within 24 hours. The orders go into our warehouse to be picked, packed and consolidated into one parcel where appropriate. Please note orders are only processed Monday-Friday.
We sometimes split orders between multiple parcels. Items from our extended range section are dispatched separately.
If any items are missing from your delivery, please allow 2 working days for the rest of your order to arrive before contacting us at sales@books2door.com
All of our books are 100% brand new, unread and purchased directly from the publishers in bulk allowing us to pass the huge savings on to you!
UK DELIVERIES
Single Books and items under 750g
Standard Delivery: £1.99 (2-4 working days)
Orders Under £40
Standard Delivery: £3.99 (2-4 working days)
Express Delivery: £5.99 (1-2 working days)
Orders between £40 and £100
Standard Delivery: Free (2-4 working days)
Express Delivery: £3.99 (reduced rate, 1-2 working days)
Orders over £100
Express Delivery: Free (1-2 working days)
These delivery times are the maximum delivery periods that a purchase can take to reach our customers. Delivery may be sooner than this. These times are an estimation, not a guarantee.
There are no deliveries on Saturdays, Sundays or Bank Holidays.