Can you spot Woollcott's mistake?

10:07am Thursday 3rd April 2008

While my reading has necessarily been focused lately on books being discussed at the Oxford Literary Festival, it has not been exclusively in this category. I have, for instance, been dipping into Long, Long Ago, a selection of essays by the American critic Alexander Woollcott (pictured), published by the Right Book Club in 1946.

	Clarissa Eden recalls the 'chippy' Col Nasser
	10:02am Thu 3 Apr 08
	'I have never had any opinion about politics at all." This statement, delivered in the well-modulated tones of a true aristocrat, will probably have surprised everyone who heard it on Tuesday afternoon in the Newman Rooms, off St Aldate's. The utterly apolitical woman gracing the second day of the Oxford Literary Festival was none other, you see, than Clarissa Eden, the niece of one British Prime Minister - perhaps our most famous one, Sir Winston Churchill - and the wife of another, Sir Anthony Eden.

An engine's name is Hall I need

4:10pm Wednesday 26th March 2008

I was at Oxford station earlier this month, camera at the ready, to capture the passage of the steam locomotive Rood Ashton Hall at the head of an enthusiasts' special from Solihull. This was the last outing for the engine before a major overhaul. Built in 1929 by the Great Western Railway, Rood Ashton Hall was one of the earliest examples of a class of mixed-traffic locomotives that eventually numbered 330. Late in its life - because of a certain amount of cannibalisation that was going on to keep old steam engines on the road - it came to incorporate parts of a later engine, Albert Hall. This name showed some desperation by the GWR, since most previous Halls had been of the residential variety. Other deviations from the pattern included Lady Margaret Hall and Toynbee Hall. As production of the class neared its end, some wag suggested the last engine might appropriately be called That's Hall.

Middle Eastern magic for the White House

4:08pm Wednesday 26th March 2008

I am delighted today to be the bearer of good news for everyone worried about the future of the White House, in Botley Road. This includes many of my West Oxford neighbours, and a good few of my colleagues at Newspaper House, for whom the place is something of an office 'local', as it has been, indeed, since our business transferred to this end of town in 1973 and I and other bibulous colleagues very soon found a home from home in what was then the Old Gate House. There were nearer hostelries to the office but - in the way of pubs in those days - they "didn't do food", or at least not food of the range and quality offered by the Old Gate's Tom Rice and his son, also Tom.

So Andrew profits after all

4:06pm Wednesday 26th March 2008

I am sorry to go on about this but it seems that Andrew Lloyd Webber is, after all, going to be coining it from the new production of Oliver! which the BBC is generously helping him to plug with the prime-time I'd Do Anything talent show. Though it's a Cameron Mackintosh show, it is being staged at the Lloyd Webber-owned Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. Richard Brooks, of the Sunday Times, said Oliver! would earn him at least £60,000 a week in rent and fees. So it's third time lucky for Lord Lloyd-Webber, after the BBC helped him to hit the jackpot with revivals of The Sound of Music and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

	Kick out commuters' cars
	4:24pm Wed 19 Mar 08
	I note that the car park at the southern end of Oxford's Port Meadow is being closed for a few days at the end of the month for essential maintenance. For all the use it is to people visiting the meadow, it might as well stay shut for good.

	Giles Coren's lavatory 'humour'
	4:22pm Wed 19 Mar 08
	From time to time, without my ever having asked for the favour, I am sent a free copy of Richard Ingrams's excellent publication, The Oldie. One came last week, announcing that the Rev Ian Paisley had been named Oldie of the Year. A pity there was not an award for Odious Twerp of the Year. That title might have gone to Giles Coren.

	This time Sir Cameron has Beeb's backing
	4:19pm Wed 19 Mar 08
	First, an apology - unsolicited by anyone - to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Last week, having been misinformed by the Radio Times, I confidently asserted that I'd Do Anything, the TV talent show on which he is a judge, was plugging one of his own West End productions (as two previous TV series in which he was involved had done). On the very day my article appeared, The Times published a report setting out the true position. In fact, Lord Lloyd-Webber is not going to be benefiting financially this time; instead, the production will be helping to line the pockets of his (spectacularly rich) mucker Sir Cameron Mackintosh (above). He will be putting on the West End production of Oliver! which TV viewers are helping to cast.

Story that gives me déjà vu

11:29am Thursday 13th March 2008

Every few weeks (or so it seems) the Daily Telegraph reports how some oldie is hanging on to his or her long-cherished family home in Sandbanks, Dorset - one of Britain's most expensive places to live - instead of realising the many millions it is now worth. This week it was the turn of Lalage Bailey, whose property - bought in 1949 for £8,000 - could sell for £8m. "I have had many estate agents offering me more money than sense, but I don't want to move," she said.

	When student revels set the social tone
	11:26am Thu 13 Mar 08
	Few if any events during the Oxford Literary Festival will be taking place in a venue more suited to the subject under discussion than D.J.Taylor's talk on his book Bright Young People (Chatto & Windus, £20). As Taylor tells us in his hugely entertaining history, Oxford can be considered a "Bright Young Person's nursery"; and though we might have doubts about his placing of the apostrophe, what he says is clearly true. There were, of course, many Oxford persons being BYPs in the 1920s, and a number of the best-known were studying at the literary festival's main venue, Christ Church.

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