Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
* In a wooden shack which I had built myself during World War II when Home Guard Sergeant and then Intelligence Officer in charge of Eastern and Central Oxford where locally we rather expected Hitler to strike; however, I am reminded by a correspondent that another rumour had it that Hitler had ordained that Oxford was not to be bombed as he planned to make the world-renowned ‘city of dreaming spires’ the capital of ‘occupied England’ — to which its relative immunity from bombing throughout World War II would seem to lend credence.