Curious about what’s behind Apt to be Suspicious? Explore my author notes about the historical details behind the book. In this case, I’ve also included the Oxford University explanation included in the book at the end for folks who wanted a little more narrative explanation of Oxford’s customs and practices than the characters provide.
These notes do contain some plot spoilers! Otherwise, they’re as shared at the end of the book, with edits only to share the most useful links and cleaning up some formatting for the web. Posted May 2026.
Thank you so much for joining me for this romp through Oxford in the post-war period! Apt to be Suspicious is second in a series of romances in the wake of the second World War. Look for Unknown Depths and Brave Truth to come!
My thanks as always to Kiya Nicoll, editor, friend, and other half of my brain. Thanks also, for the reasons explained below, to Sadie Slater.
I keep coming back to books about the Carillons. Edmund’s parents meet and fall in love in Goblin Fruit and Geoffrey and Alexander collaborate on a complex project (where you can find how Berlioz was deployed) in Best Foot Forward. My website and wiki have more ways to find other books about the family.
You can find Giles and Kate’s romance in Wards of the Roses and see a lot more of Cammie in Illusion of a Boar.
About names
First, Vesta’s name and interests come from Barbara van Look, one of the people who chose it as a Kickstarter reward in 2024 (for the production of Pastiche in audio book). Thank you, Barbara! Getting to include glimpses of the archaeology here was great fun!
The title, Apt to be Suspicious is drawn from a line in the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey. It comes from book 7, line 308, when Odysseus is explaining to Alcinous in Phaecaia why he didn’t come up to the palace: “I thought you might get annoyed at seeing me. We humans on this earth are apt to be suspicious.”
I loved the emphasis on how both Edmund and Pen spent the war being suspicious in various ways, and the echoes that continues to have for them both. Other title contenders (with book and line) included A Life of Ease (1.159), Son of Someone Lucky (1.216), Minds in Harmony (6.185), Near at Hand (7.308), Gates of Horn (19.565), and Power in the House (21.352).
Oxford details
I’ll talk more about the specifics below, but I hit a particular challenge with this book. Oxford – like many institutions – has a rolling date of 80 years for when they make certain kinds of digitised material available to the public. If you’ll do the maths, you’ll realise that 2025 is not yet 80 years from 1948.
Those key documents include the University Gazette, a weekly publication that has things like the dates of term, major exams, and who the lecturers and lectures are each term. I spent a lot of time beating my head against a wall trying to figure some of this out in other sources I felt confident about. I knew the Gazette existed online (and I could see these details for earlier in the 1940s), but the year I needed it was limited to access to people with current Oxford logins.
I put out a plea to my newsletter and to friends, and a friend of a friend gladly stepped in to help with a few key questions (and then sent along some additional information that was incredibly useful.) My very great thanks to Sadie Slater for all of that, including confirmation of term dates, the lists of current tutors, and info about the lectures for the terms. She also helped me confirm I could riff on the classified ads in the ways I did and have them make sense. All the lectures mentioned are therefore historically what was being offered that year.
I went with real colleges for both Pen and Edmund – more about that as we get into specific chapter notes. I did try to see if I could get a little of the Inklings (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and their other circles) or Dorothy L. Sayers and the other female dons of the period in there. But both Edmund and Pen were resolutely interested in other areas of study and focus.
Background reading
The background reading for this book is the most extensive I’ve done yet for a single title – well over 3,500 pages of reading, including all of Emily Wilson’s translations of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, it also presented several complications, not least because researching secret agencies tends to get tricky.
There’s an excellent book on MI6, Keith Jeffrey’s The Secret History of MI6 that covers up to 1949. However, he opens the book by explaining that while MI6 were very generous in his access, the agency had kept very little material over the years compared to some organisations. For security reasons, they tended to destroy paper materials once the operational need was over. Sensible practice, but hard on the historians and archivists who come later! I also read Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6 by Gordon Thomas for more early background and Women in Intelligence by Helen Fry.
On Pen’s side, The Code Book by Simon Singhwas a great overview of both codes and codebreaking history (though I still do not claim to have more than a rudimentary understanding of how Enigma machines actually work). The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay gave me many key details about Pen’s life at Bletchley, including a number of the social details.
For Oxford, I read The University of Oxford by Laurence Brockliss which is a lengthy, comprehensive, and fascinating look at the history of the university from the beginnings (fortunately with a good chapter on the post-war period). Two other key books are by the man I ended up settling on as Edmund’s tutor (more about him below), written as Dacre Balsdon: Oxford Life (1957) and Oxford Now and Then (1970). He spent his life at the university and his books give both a wonderful view of the university’s habits and quirks, but also how things changed over time. Not Far From Brideshead by Daisy Dunnfocuses on a specific set of academic rivalries in the period between the wars. It was less directly relevant to Edmund than I thought when I started reading it, but it’s a great look at how several specific colleges and some key personalities of the period.
While it didn’t come up directly in the book as much as I thought it might, Jane Robinson’s In A Family Way is a look at the various policies, organisations, practices, and attitudes around illegitimate children in the period. (It has a number of heart-breaking stories, but also some very tender ones).
On to the specific chapters!
The Oxford notes (that follow on this page) have general background about Oxford. As noted there, both Edmund and Pen’s tutors and colleges are real, though I kept myself to published material about (and by) both of them.
Chapter 2: J. P. V. D. Balsdon was one of three tutors in Greats at Exeter in this period. He was highly respected in his field, with a particular fondness for the Romans. He was also – besides his more casual non-fiction writing about the University noted above – well known for his kindness to and engagement with undergraduates, as Edmund mentions. The comments about him come from various things written about him, including his obituary.
Why is Edmund at Exeter? His father was. Years ago when I was sorting out Geoffrey Carillon’s education, I picked Exeter because that’s the college where my father did his master’s degree. (His bachelor’s and PhD, both in Classics, were elsewhere.)
People have asked me multiple times about Giles and guide dogs. They came into the United Kingdom in the early 1930s (due to post-Great-War anti-German prejudice, partly) and in this period they were uniformly German Shepherds. Giles had one, Madeline, in 1935, as seen briefly in Best Foot Forward.
Guide dogs have limits on their working life, so by 1947 he’s recently moved to his second dog, Cassia, seen here. (I suspect there was a year or two between them, both for training timeline reasons and because Giles was doing less that required independent movement in the later part of WW2.)
Chapter 3 : Bletchley Park was of course famously the main codebreaking location for the United Kingdom during the war. Staff kept to extremely strict codes of secrecy and were also kept within strict groups in terms of work (they might mingle socially with people working in other huts, but never discussed what they were working from). Hiring went in multiple waves, as Pen and her aunt Agnes discuss later in the book, but by the time Pen started there, they were looking for women who could run the bombe machines (yes, that spelling) that did the bulk of the decoding work mechanically.
Tea rationing was even tighter than usual in 1947 due to strikes and shipping limitations. At the time they were trying to alternate months between 2 ounce and 3 ounce rations.
Chapter 4: Cryptic crosswords are their own particular thing. They rely on being able to decode the clue and then figure out the word that matches – something that often drew (especially in this period) on a particular canon of literature, history, music, and other cultural knowledge. The clue does usually give hints about some of that decoding like whether you’re supposed to rearrange the letters or the answer is something that sounds like another word, and so on.
I am by no means remotely skilled at cryptics, but my father got anyone going near a newsstand carrying the London Times to bring him a copy whenever he could. He would actually often do them in pen. So I desperately appreciate the art form, wanted to include it and have been deeply grateful for library access that includes both the crosswords for the day and (the next day) the solutions. Thank you, Boston Public Library!
Thus, I can tell you that all of the clues and answers in this book are in fact from the appropriate day’s crossword.
Chapter 5: C.T. Atkinson was a historian who did in fact present a lecture at the appropriate point here. It provided a nice jumping-off point for Edmund with people who aren’t magical, the kinds of conversations he’s dodging around, and how he deals with those topics. As he notes, his father Geoffrey was at the First Battle of Ypres.
Edmund quotes here from Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad, a poetic version that does not stick very closely to the original text. Edmund’s other short quotations are usually me riffing on Emily Wilson’s, looking at the translation mostly recently done in Britain while Edmund was in university (the W.H.D. Rouse translation in 1938), and peering at the Greek a bit.
Chapter 6: Pen mentions various groups active during the war, several of whom had roles at Bletchley Park. The Wrens was the common name for the WRNS or Women’s Royal Naval Service, the women’s branch of the navy. The ATS was the Auxiliary Territorial Service, women serving in a military-adjacent role for the army. Many of them delivered despatches, as well as doing motor and other similar work, and some staffed gun emplacements, as well as working at places like Bletchley. Cammie and Hypatia were both in the ATS during the war, as seen in Illusion of a Boar. (That’s where you can find the explanation of what Cammie was up to that she doesn’t explain to Pen here.)
It was a trifle hard to pin down when Pen’s math preliminary exams were, but probably December of this year, after her 4th term at Oxford. (She did well on them, but not as obviously brilliantly as Edmund did.)
Chapter 9: The package that Alexander shared around contains maple sugar candy, a present from Theodore. Alexander and Geoffrey Carillon met him in Germany in 1935 in Best Foot Forward. Alexander met him again (with better results for Theodore) in 1938 in Nocturnal Quarry, and as a considerate sort of man, he sends care packages with sugar.
The United Kingdom has two main branches of intelligence work at this point in time. MI5 covers internal intelligence, MI6 covers foreign work. MI6 was responsible for most (though not all) of the code-breaking efforts during the Second World War.
Chapter 10 : Oxford has a series of notable lectures that are held each year, like many other universities. I have taken here from the historical Waynflete lecture this year, because Professor Born’s lectures were published and I could figure out when he gave each one. The texts are available online if you’re curious. Waynflete lectures are in fact the historical ones, as is Professor Born, and the texts are available online.
Also like other universities, there are a vast number of student groups. The Oxford University Dramatic Society or OUDS is notable for being a cross-college project, and also for putting on some notable productions over the years.
Chapter 11 : The jussive is a grammatical mood that doesn’t really clearly exist in English (it’s sort of covered by ‘should’). But it is commonly used in multiple dialects of Arabic (including classical Arabic, which is closest to the magical dialect that Edmund and Alexander are using here).
It’s relevant here because of the conversation Alexander and Edmund have in the rest of the chapter, about the nature of what Edmund is doing with Naming. Naming does allow a mode of absolute command if you know enough of the names and have the skill and magical strength to compel. Or, as Edmund is doing, it can be used to encourage or coax, much as a falconer encourages a falcon, or a horse trainer a horse.
Chapter 12: The completely awful pun about Scotland in the crossword in this chapter has the clue: “City in which there is opposition to a Scots exclamation”. The answer? Antioch.
Chapter 13 : For the source of one of the pet alchemists, see Best Foot Forward. The two of them under one roof have a number of benefits, but also some amusements for those who know them.
Chapter 19 : Alexander is making a reference here to how Edmund’s parents arranged to approach him for assistance at the beginning of Best Foot Forward in 1935. Lizzie knew of Alexander’s particular fondness for Berlioz’s Les Troyens and arranged to have some pieces included in a concert. Edmund absolutely knows that story and has heard it retold a number of times now by all parties involved. (Also, the fact that it is also about the Trojan War is unplanned – I’d been drawing on the history of the first performance – but a fascinating counterpoint to the Homeric references in the rest of the book.)
Chapter 20: Punting is a common outing for undergraduates at both Oxford and Cambridge, but as with many other things there are slight variations. The Cambridge bit of the river runs closer to more colleges, while the Oxford bit of the Cherwell has the backs of a few colleges but more in the way of playing fields and gardens and parks. One advantage of a punt – especially in the days when mixed gender groups had few places for more private conversations – was that you could find a spot without other people around that had seating, space for refreshments, and no one terribly nearby.
The other big difference is in how you punt. Punts have a raised area at the back of the boat called the till. Cambridge traditionally stands on this (flat) section and pushes with the pole behind the punt. Oxford traditionally stands in the bottom of the boat (because the traditional shape of the till in Oxford is slightly rounded) and poles from the side. There are plenty of videos out there if you want to see the two in action. The classic punting problem is the pole getting stuck in the mud at the bottom of the river and the necessary choice to hang onto the pole (and slowly slide into the water, probably) or drop the pole and have to paddle back to it. You will note that neither Edmund nor Pen have this problem.
Chapter 21: The armour of Achilles is an incredible work of art, and I encourage anyone curious to go read this bit in book 18 of the Iliad. Hephaestus makes it in a single night, and the descriptions of it are stunningly detailed.
Chapter 25 : Mesopotamia is indeed a little slice of land between two rivers at Oxford. Academic plays on words that are also entirely obvious are a terribly consistent thing it turns. In earlier days (mostly before the time of this book) there was a spot a little upriver of this area where male dons would bathe, often nude.
Chapter 26 : Edmund recaps the events of On The Bias (Benton and Cassie’s romance), with additional followup from Nocturnal Quarry.
Chapter 28: The Bullingdon is one of the clubs that universities often produce. These are gatherings of a number of people (in the period, men) who would get together, drink and eat, and sometimes get into a great deal of trouble. The Bullingdon was and continues infamous for being particularly destructive.
Chapter 32: Eights Week is the main rowing event of the Oxford year. It involves races with eight oared boats (hence the name) with a coxswain guiding. It’s a ‘bumps’ race, where the boats start out at measured lengths apart, and the goal is to catch up to the boat ahead of you and bump or overlap. When that happens, both boats pull to the side, and it changes the race order for subsequent races. It helps manage racing of multiple boats in narrow stretches of river. The race week involves a lot of parties as well as the racing.
Chapter 34 : Circe in mythology has a fascinating role. In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew arrive at an island (trying to find their way home from Troy). and split up to investigate. Circe transforms the first group of men who find her into pigs. Hermes (Mercury in Roman myth) meets Odysseus on the path, provides him with a particular plant – moly – and helps him navigate getting his men free. Circe then asks Odysseus to her bed, though exactly what happens there is somewhat ambiguous in terms of his fidelity to his wife Penelope.
When I was thinking about the plot of this book, I kept coming back to a different bit of lore, about Circe being a nymph and particularly protective of her younger sisters. One of the things that fascinates me about the mythological Circe is that a lot of her actions are absolutely protective, if you think about her being on an island that other people keep landing on and assuming they can use as they like.
Chapter 36: Argos, Odysseus’s dog, is a particularly sad but memorable bit in book 17 of the Odyssey. When Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, he comes in disguise as a beggar. In the courtyard of the palace, there is an ancient dog lying there, Argos. (Odysseus has been gone for twenty years, as the counting goes, and Argos was clearly an adult dog when he left.) Argos picks up his head, recognises his master’s return, and promptly dies, satisfied. (And Odysseus, being in disguise, can’t react to this in any obvious way, but it is yet one more loss from the war and his problems getting home.) Comments about this bit note how Argos’s death is handled in the same ways as deaths of noble warriors, in terms of the construction and description of the scene.
The Carillons are oddly, as Edmund puts it, not a dog family particularly. However, he both appreciates this particular loyalty, and also is going to have a hard time in that day’s class given recent events.
Chapter 37: “Clough’s problematical dupes” comes as noted from “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth”, a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough written in 1849. It was notably quoted by Winston Churchill in 1941. I happen to have a 1945 printing of the Oxford Book of English Verse on my bookshelf (it was my father’s, won as a school prize), and it is poem 750 in that edition. That would be the edition Edmund consults.
Thank you again for coming along on this story! We’ll have two more romances in the post-war years. The next, Unknown Depths finds Rowena Edgarton dealing with a problem off the coast of Scotland in 1949.
If you want to know more about what’s coming, the best way is to sign up for my mailing list. You can also find me other places online – check out my contact page for more details.
Happy reading!
About Oxford
One of the challenges of writing about Oxford is that Oxford is not like most universities that English-speaking readers are likely to be familiar with, unless they actually attended Oxford or Cambridge. I’ve done my utmost to make what’s going on clear enough in context. For people who prefer a more linear explanation not burdened by what the characters are likely to mention, here are the useful details in one place.
Oxford University
Oxford University is made of many different colleges. Your college is where you work with your tutor, eat, receive your mail, and in most cases, sleep. It forms the basis of your daily life, including a college library, common room, and other facilities. Each college decides who they admit, and to which area of study. In Apt to be Suspicious, we see Somerville College in some detail, a bit of Exeter, and mentions of Oriel. More about individual rooms and spaces below.
The university as a whole provides other resources. There’s the Bodleian Library (often referred to as “the Bod”) and other specialist libraries. There are buildings for science labs and other spaces where it doesn’t make sense for each college to maintain their own equipment. Many of the clubs and organisations (like the Oxford University Drama Society, O.U.D.S.) are at a university level, rather than a college one.
There are a variety of positions at each college when it comes to teaching – lecturers, tutors, professors, and others. The terminology can be extremely opaque. When I’m referring to real people in the text, I’m using the form of address (Mr, Miss, Professor, Doctor) used in the University Gazette for them. This is a period when things were moving from mostly unmarried academics living in rooms at college (true up to about the Great War) to being married with families and living in the town or nearby areas.
Secondary education
In this period, there were public schools (what Americans think of as private schools). Students here pay tuition or perhaps qualify for a scholarship. At this time most of those schools are single gender. Edmund mentions several of the best known boys schools a few times: Eton, Harrow, Winchester. There was absolutely a tunnel from these schools through Oxford and Cambridge into the upper echelons of the Civil Service, including MI5 and MI6, the intelligence services.
Others would attend government run schools (paid for by taxes). In 1944 (so, after our key characters left school here), Butler’s Education Act divided schools into primary and secondary (with the break at 11, with the 11+ Exam determining which school you went to). Those exams were driven by knowledge more readily available to middle and upper class children. (Thesan Wain talks about this in Eclipse as it applied to the magical schools, using a similar system) The act in 1944 created three categories of schools funded to some degree by the state, depending on a number of factors. Additional exams would be involved for university acceptance (often designed by the specific university).
Both Pen and Edmund attended Schola, one of Albion’s Five Schools. Schola teaches a range of academic subjects (though in a different structure than most non-magical schools of the era). Both of them needed to do additional tutoring to be prepared for the university exams. Fortunately, this is the sort of thing that could be handled by tutors and some hard work over the summer.
Schedule
Oxford has three terms a year: Michaelmas, Trinity, and Hilary. The terms run for twelve weeks (with some events and activities the week before and after term). In the 1947-1948 year, Michaelmas Term ran from October 12th to December 6th, Hilary or Lent Term from January 18th to March 13th, and Trinity Term from April 25th to June 19th.
The vacations aren’t time off, though! This is meant to be the time when students do extensive reading in their subject, so when they come back up to university, they can do deeper analysis and work with it. It was common to have reading parties where groups of students would go to some often scenic location, do their reading, and also other activities. This often involved having some resources to travel or a spare house that could absorb students.
The Swiss Alps were a popular location, as well as the Lake District and other particularly scenic locations in the British Isles. As more middle and lower class or income students began going to Oxford and Cambridge, these patterns started changing. Those students often picked up work during the vacations to pay their bills.
Studying a subject
When applying for a place at Oxford, you applied for a specific college but also a specific subject. The college only had so many tutors in a particular topic, and so there were a finite number of places available. In the year of this book, there are three tutors in what we’d mostly refer to as Classics at Exeter College. (More about this in the author notes as it applies to Edmund and Pen.)
The shape of study also looked quite different from what I and many others are used to. My college education involved taking four or five classes a term, each with a different professor assigning their own assignments and exams, final papers, or projects. The next term, it’d likely be four different professors, and four different topics. At Oxford, the only thing that matters for whether you get your degree is how you do on your exams. The degree was three years of study (most subjects, including maths) with some subjects (including Greats) lasting for four.
Pen is reading maths or mathematics. Edmund’s is a little more complex. Formally he’s reading (the Oxford term for ‘studying’ or ‘majoring in’) Literae Humaniores (Latin for “more human literature”), or what many of us would refer to as Classics. More commonly at Oxford it’s referred to as “Greats”. In this period, it required mastery and translation of both Latin and Greek, as well as a study of other relevant topics (with some specialisation possibly) including classical literature, Greek and Roman history, philosophy, archaeology, and linguistics.
At Oxford, lectures are scheduled across the university. Students could attend any lecture they liked in most cases. You could go one week, miss the next three, and then turn up again, without any penalty and with no specific assignments or feedback. The lecture schedules were published in the University Gazette, available to everyone in the university. There were some smaller classes that had a limited number of seats as well, like science lab courses, that worked a little differently.
The one regular weekly appointment for most students was their tutorial. These could be the student and tutor, or a small group of two or three students. Depending on the subject, there would be specific material to cover, such as writing a paper on a set topic or doing problem sets. The tutorial would dive into that, provide suggestions for improvement, and recommend specific works or lectures or resources for the topic. These were also, however, technically entirely optional.
Exams were what mattered. Greats had not only a final exam, but also the looming Honour Moderations exams or Honour Mods, taken just after the end of Trinity term in the second year. (As Edmund takes them here.) These were gruelling, with two three-hour exams each day, morning and afternoon, for six days, a total of twelve exam papers. Exams are marked as earning a first (highest honours), second, or a pass.
“Collections” were exams taken before term started, to help guide what you needed to work on. Final exams at the end of your degree determined if you earned your degree, and how well you did. Doing well on intermediary exams (like the Honour Mods) could earn you visible academic honours.
Life at your college
Most students lived in rooms at college. These varied a bit, but they generally involved a sitting room and a bedroom (small, but not shared). The lavatories, baths, and plumbing were often in an entirely different building, so there were also chamberpots and pitchers and basins in use. These and things like the fireplaces for heat, would be tended by scouts assigned to a specific set of rooms. Those were usually referred to as a staircase, as the rooms would be off a set of stairs.
The scouts would also see to laundry, providing breakfast, and a wide range of other housekeeping services. Some students – especially when Oxford was overcrowded, as in this period – lived in rooms outside of their college. Edmund here is glad to have that opportunity in his second year, for more privacy, vastly better plumbing, and more space for his ritual work.
Students had specific expectations for clothing. Wearing academic dress was expected for tutorials, exams, and other academic appointments or for formal hall. This included an academic gown, and a suitable mortar board or soft cap. For certain occasions, you’d wear subfusc, a term for a dark suit or black skirt and white blouse, as well as black socks or hosiery and a suitable tie. Observing the specifics mattered! At other times, students would wear tidy clothing suitable for the period – a suit, dress, blouse and skirt, etc. – under their academic gown.
The academic gown also indicated things about your status. The commoners’ gown (as Pen wears) is a simple hip-length vest with hanging strips over the shoulders. The scholars’ gown for undergraduates is vastly more voluminous, falls to the knees, and is worn by those who did particularly well on their scholarship exams or on something like Honour Mods. Graduate students have their own, and so do the academic staff.
Lunch and dinner were generally eaten in hall. Different colleges had different schedules for formal hall, with particular customs, but usually this was at least a few times a week. Being at hall was expected most of the time, as it was a key point in the college community gathering. More about how rationing was handled in period in the author’s notes.
Colleges also had porters, who accepted packages, saw to getting items moved around in college, and various other tasks. They’d have an office near the main entrance. Usually there would be pigeon holes (pidges) or cubbies nearby, for student mail and notes. In a time before email and mobile phones, these were key in making arrangements to meet up with friends.
The porters also paid attention to who hadn’t come in, and university dons (teachers) and proctors also would keep an eye on the streets and gates to catch people trying to sneak in after curfew. In general, there were some significant restrictions on behaviour, although complicated in the post-war period by both the large numbers at Oxford, and the fact that many of both the men and women had recently been serving during the war in various ways, and were not entirely inclined to be treated like schoolchildren.
The women’s colleges worked in a similar way to the men’s, but tended to be a lot more strict. A woman who didn’t sleep in her rooms could be sent down (expelled) far more commonly than men were for the same thing. It was also not permitted to have men up to your rooms, so common spaces, general university spaces, clubs, and a friendly available punt were common options for people who were seeing each other who wanted to avoid trouble.
Finally, the Junior Common Room (JCR) was a gathering place for undergraduates. The Senior Common Room or SCR was for lecturers, tutors, professors, and other academic staff. Some colleges had a Middle Common Room for graduate students. It was common for students to chat before or after hall in the evening, or to use the space for casual conversations, gossip, and other amusements. It was also a convenient place to leave an academic gown if you didn’t need it right then, or maybe a book.
Activities
There were a wide range of student organisations available. Both Pen and Edmund have other things keeping them busy, so they mostly don’t appear here. However, sports were absolutely a major focus for many students, both on land (cricket and others) and rowing. Various social clubs ranged from the mild (book discussions, music performances) to the wild (drinking clubs like the Bullingdon, who get a brief mention.)
Oxford sits at the junction of the Isis (what the Thames is called in those parts) and the Cherwell rivers. There would be racing on the river, such as during Eights Week in the spring and other times during other terms. Punting on the river in long flat-bottomed boats was an excellent way to get outside, have a bit more privacy to talk or flirt, and otherwise enjoy nature.
The Academy
Finally, a word about the Academy, the college for magical students of Albion. This basically functions like any other Oxford college, with two exceptions. First, everyone there must also be associated with one of the non-magical colleges, and that’s how their courses, tutorials, housing, meals, and everything else are arranged. That’s also true for the academic staff. Giles Lefton, for example, is a tutor at Oriel, and takes his meals in hall there.
The Academy here has its own spaces: lecture halls, common rooms, library. Instead of providing rooms for sleep, they provide magical workroom spaces, essential for students living in non-magical rooms in their own college. They don’t generally serve meals (especially during the periods of rationing) but do keep tea and tisane available. The Academy is also vastly more flexible about men and women being in private together.