Tonight I had the pleasure of speaking to the Bicester Local History Society at the Clifton Centre, kindly invited by my good friend and fellow villager, Bob Hessian. It was a wet February evening – the sort that would have given everyone a perfectly respectable excuse to stay at home – yet the room was…
There are some weekends that remind you exactly why community matters. Today was one of them. I had the great pleasure of opening the One World Family Festival 2026, a vibrant celebration of the many communities and faiths that call Oxfordshire home. This year’s theme was Nature – a wonderfully unifying choice. After all, whatever…
This evening I was the guest of the Mayor of at a reception to thank the voluntary organisations of the town. It was one of those quietly uplifting evenings that reset one’s understanding of what really keeps a community functioning. Throughout this year as High Sheriff, I have been repeatedly surprised by organisations I had…
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…