The city’s cultural highlights are part of a Christmas-tinged visit – by rail and bus – that also includes a walk by the Thames and Blenheim Palace’s festive extravaganza
A gust of cinnamon from a pine-wreathed glühwein stand while the carousel plays Frosty the Snowman, and neon snowflakes decorate the neoclassical columns. A Pavlovian sense of festivity fights with my inner Scrooge. On the journey, there were still smudges of autumnal ochre on the wooded hills outside the train window. But Oxford, an hour’s ride from London’s Marylebone station, is in Christmas mode.
I’m planning festive cultural tourism in my old home city, including visits to places in Philip Pullman’s books; His Dark Materials is currently enlivening Sunday nights as a BBC One drama. First stop is the Ashmolean Museum, 10 minutes’ walk from Oxford station. The world’s first museum has had a £61m revamp in the last decade and ancient treasures are newly revealed. The Last Supper in Pompeii exhibition (adult £12.25, 12-17s £6, until 12 January 2020) recreates Roman feasts from mosaics, rusty pruning hooks and carbonised pomegranates.
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