Did you know?

• A trip to the Ashmolean for Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson led to the latter, under his nom de plume Lewis Carroll, immortalizing both Liddell and himself (as a dodo) in the Alice books.

• A man was crushed beneath his own cart wheels in 1872, when his horse reared after meeting an elephant on the road from Oxford to Eynsham.

• Despite Percy Bysshe Shelley being expelled from University College for writing the pamphlet ‘The Necessity of Atheism’, he is now its most celebrated alumnus.

The Little Book of Oxfordshire is a funny, fact-packed compendium of the sort of frivolous, fantastic or simply strange information no one will want to be without. Here we find out about the most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, and hundreds of interesting facts (plus some authentically bizarre bits of historical trivia).

Combining essential details with little-known and entertaining information and quotations, this book is a highly engaging guide to where you are, what to look out for now you’re here, and how on earth all this came to be.