Outcomes Pre-intermediate Videoscript

Page 165 Video 7: Oxford

About 80 kilometres north-west of London is the city of Oxford. Oxford began as ‘Ford of
the Oxen’, a simple place for farmers to take their cattle across the river. Today it is a city,
famous for being the home of the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-
speaking world. Although no-one knows exactly when the university began, historians know
that people were teaching and studying here as far back as 1096. Today, more than 900 years
later, it is the combination of the university’s fame and the beauty of its buildings that brings
thousands of visitors here each year.

One of the largest colleges in Oxford is Christchurch College. In recent years, the college
building, in particular its great hall, has become famous as a filming location for the Harry
Potter movies.

Part Two

But Christchurch is also well known as the home of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, also known
as Lewis Carroll. And it was at Christchurch that Dodgson first met the children of the head
of the college, Henry Liddell. The Liddell children, in particular young Alice Pleasance
Liddell, became good friends with Dodgson. He took them on boat rides along the river and
told them many stories. One of these stories told the adventure of a girl called Alice, in a
confusing underground land that he called Wonderland. Although the stories were fantastic
and strange, Dodgson based them on situations, places and people that were familiar to the
children. For example, in Through the Looking Glass, Alice visits a shop where she meets a
sheep and things on the shelves float away when Alice tries to look at them. Many believe the
shop in the story represents a small shop just across the road from Christchurch. In
Dodgson’s time the shopkeeper was an old woman with a sheep-like voice. The shop itself
was often flooded with water from a nearby stream.

However, it is not unusual for Oxford to appear in fantasy stories. Besides Dodgson, the city
has also influenced the writing of other great fantasy writers like Philip Pullman and Diana
Wynne Jones and, most famously, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. These two writers formed
a writing club called The Inklings. They often met here, at The Eagle and the Child, and it
was here that Lewis’ Narnia series and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings began to take shape.
Having inspired so many wonderful writers and their amazing stories, it is no wonder the city
of Oxford will be visited and treasured for a long time to come.