There’s a reason pubs sit at the cradle of English culture. In a snug shelter of oak and amber light, where the clink of glasses keeps time with conversation, men and women risk saying the things they really think.
In such rooms, ideas are tested as iron sharpens iron – with laughter for a whetstone. Oxford, more than most places, has known this sacrament of conviviality. And no public house bears that memory more than the Eagle and Child – also known as the “Bird and Baby” – where friendship and argument ripened into myth.
