I have written recently about a carol service at HMP Huntercombe that will stay with me for a very long time. Today’s visit belongs in the same category. Over the past year I have been inside Huntercombe on a number of occasions – for worship, for conversation, for meetings with staff and prisoners. Each time…
A small but important clarification at the outset: it’s St John, not St John’s. They’re every bit as precise about that as the Scouts are about not being called “Boy Scouts”. And quite right too. I was delighted to spend the evening in Banbury with St John Ambulance, hosted by a superb local leadership team….
Last night’s Annual Dinner of the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps was one of those occasions that manages to feel both timeless and thoroughly contemporary. Held in the magnificent surroundings of Balliol College, the dinner brought together more than one hundred officer cadets and their guests, filling the hall with that distinctive mix of ceremonial…
A cold February evening is not the night for boating on the Thames. But it was very much the right night to be at TS Euryalus, home of the Oxford unit of the Sea Cadets. With the weather keeping everyone firmly ashore, cadets, volunteers, families and supporters gathered for the Unit’s annual awards evening –…
An early celebration of Lunar New Year took place this morning at , on a day that was about as bleak and rain-soaked as an English February can manage. Grey skies, persistent drizzle, and that particular chill that settles in before lunchtime. And then you stepped inside Cecconi’s Bicester – and everything changed. A sea…
Tonight’s High Sheriff of Oxfordshire’s Law Lecture was one of those occasions that reminds me why this ancient role still matters. We gathered in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre with a wonderfully broad mix of people – judges, lawyers, academics, public servants, volunteers, community leaders, sixth formers and university students. That diversity matters. Conversations about law…
I confess something slightly shameful. As an alumnus of the other university in Oxford, I had never properly set foot in the Bodleian. No studying there, no late-night essays under watchful portraits, no quietly reverential wandering between shelves. Until today. What a joy to finally put that right. This afternoon’s visit to the was a…
Last night, I had the great pleasure of being at the New Theatre Oxford with Mark for OXOPS’s production of The Sound of Music – and what a thoroughly uplifting evening it was. This is one of those shows that sits deep in the national psyche. Most of us think we know it before the…
A real delight to visit Witney Buttercross Scout Group this evening and spend time with the Marlborough Cub Pack, one of five Cub packs within the Group. For those who do not know it, Witney Buttercross Scout Group is something of a powerhouse. With more than 400 young people and around 40 adults in uniform,…
I visited earlier today, not quite sure what to expect. The old hospital site is still there, the imposing Victorian asylum building standing as a reminder of a very different era in mental health care. Alongside it sits the newer complex, built on what was once marshland within the grounds. The contrast is striking –…
