Category: Oxford Link

The Birdcage evokes images of beauty constrained by bars, of colour and noise muted by an unthinking and uncaring jailer. This is life symbolically captured in first world war Salonika; its exotic blend of inhabitants protected from the bellicose Bulgars by a ring of barbed-wire. Any notion of siege mentality though is shattered by the … Continue reading “The Birdcage by Clive Aslet”

Septimus Oates is a scholastic sleuth caught up in a regal conspiracy that takes the reader on a trip through European history during the 150 years leading up to the start of the Great War. The aspiring Oxford research fellow witnesses an apparent murder in a university side street where the only tangible link connecting … Continue reading “The Zaharoff Conspiracy (A Septimus Oates Mystery) by Toby Purser”

A nocturnal stroll through the moonlit landscape sounds like the backdrop to a horror story but Nightwalk is infact Chris Yates’s sensory journey into the natural world that surrounds him. The prospect of being enveloped by a foreboding forest leaves the reader, and occasionally the author confronting all their irrational fears of the dark. Yet … Continue reading “Nightwalk by Chris Yates”

Tom Cotterill was one of the many Allied soldiers involved in the final German retreat to the mythical Hindenburg Line as the clock inexorably counted down to the cessation of hostilities on November 11 1918. This unassuming young man was the author”s great uncle and as a member of the 15 Royal Warwickshire regiment provides … Continue reading “Hundred Days – The End of the Great War by Nick Lloyd”

The apparently magical cures of sorcerers and mystics were the forerunners of modern day medicine and it was this cultural belief in the unknown and unproven, embodied by an all pervading fear of God, that gave these early doctors their power over the infirm well into the Middle Ages. The transition from prehistoric herbalism to … Continue reading “Kill or Cure – An Illustrated History of Medicine by Steve Parker”

Anthropophagy is rather a mouthful but mention cannibals to your average reader and they will more than likely conjure up images of missionaries stumbling into tribal cooking pots. This unlikely title will certainly get you sitting at the table ready for the literary starter but the fleshy main course is comprised of an unlikely fusion of a group of … Continue reading “The Reluctant Cannibals by Ian Flitcroft”

A storm of biblical proportions stirs the sleepy village of Whyncombe St. Giles and Germans into confronting the mysterious disappearance of a local girl whose life and apparent death had cast a dark shadow over the local population. The unprecedented deluge is used The author (DJ Wiseman) uses the weather as a metaphor for the … Continue reading “The Subtle Thief of Youth – DJ Wiseman”

Rats have rarely had a good press but in these surprising accounts of the near destruction and ultimate survival of the remotest wildlife environments we learn of the key role played by this indiscriminate killer. The case against the much derided rodent is fatally flawed though as Roger Lovegrove highlights man’s ecologically negligent approach to … Continue reading “Islands Beyond the Horizon by Roger Lovegrove”

Tom Kelly is a washed up spy, with allegations of torture hanging over his head, until he is offered the opportunity to revive a dying career by tracking down the soon to be anointed head of MI6 and sparing the blushes of the spying establishment. Set against the contemporary backdrop of the Arab Spring and … Continue reading “A Foreign Country – Charles Cumming”