She was not sure if it was the stone, or some fey quality of the light but everything was golden. Gilt lamposts and the crown of Isis, molten in the canals and all the birds sung like wire nightingales from the towers. Did they have to wind them up? She wondered. Faces peered from cornerpieces, [...]

‘…Oxford, where the real and unreal jostle in the streets; where North Parade is in the south and South Parade is in the north, where Paradise is lost under a pumping station; where the river mists have a solvent and vivifying effect on the stone of the ancient buildings, so that the gargoyles of Magdalen [...]