Oxford University boasts some of the most beautiful and sumptuously endowed colleges in the world, as well as the Bodleian Library and the Sheldonian Theatre. It is small wonder that it attracts so many eager, respectful visitors from overseas each year. When not being flooded with tourists, however, there is a loveliness and a tranquillity at its heart that renders it other worldly.

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The story of Oxford is, of course, more than the sum of its architecture; it is essentially the history of who went there. The list of its alumni is so distinguished, so awe-inspiring that it is hard to know where to begin A quick glance at Britain's political leadership would reveal that the twenty-five Prime Ministers, including Tony Blair, have been Oxford graduates. Among its overseas alumni are ex-President Bill Clinton, Benazir Bhutto, Bob Hawke - formerly Australian PM, Rupert Murdoch, and the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan. There are 30,000 overseas graduates in all, a third of them in the United States, and nearly all of diem the beneficiaries of the scholarships endowed by Cecil Pvhodes, himself an Oxford graduate.

Not merely government and administration, but the sciences and the arts, publishing and medicine, the academic and business worlds are all heavily influenced by Oxford. Indeed, as Richard Tames points out, 'Oxford can fairly claim to be the birthplace/midwife/crucible/catalyst of: the Arthurian legends, the English Bible and the Douai Bible, Anglicanism and Methodism, the Royal Society, the pre-Raphaelites and Aestheticism, Alice in Wonderland, the Chronicles ofNamia, and The Lord of the Rings, the OED and the DNB, Oxfam and Mensa, penicillin, the sub-four minute mile and Inspector Morse.' As if this was not enough, 'Five founders of American states were Oxford men and it was an Oxford man who founded the Smithsonian.