walks and talks

pre- and post- events

Alice 150th anniversary walks

Sunday 3 June, Saturday 30 June, Sunday 15 July
1.30 pm

90-minute walk, starts in Broad Street and ends at Alice’s Shop in St. Aldates.

City and river walk, which includes riverside paths familiar to Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll on a circuit of Christ Church Meadow.

Discover the essential role that the River Thames played as the inspiration for many of the stories in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and in ensuring the special friendship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell. See Victorian Oxford through their eyes, and with reference to many other fictional and historical sources.

You'll see:

• the place where Carroll and the Liddell sisters started their many outings on the River Thames – still operated by the same family as in the 1860s
• accounts of the real people on whom some of the characters are probably based
• explanations of the real 'Treacle Well’, ‘Pool of Tears’, and Hatter’s House
• some local history and geography, from Oxford’s earliest days to the present
• reference to other notable Oxford works of children’s literature

Led by local historian and guide, Mark Davies, author of Alice in Waterland: Lewis Carroll and the River Thames in Oxford.

Organised through Oxford Tourist Information Centre. Cost £6.50 per person (children £3.75). Booking.

150th anniversary talk: Alice in Waterland: once upon a time, 150 years ago ...

Thursday 17th May, 8pm
St Barnabas Church, Jericho

The creation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland dates from a rowing trip to Godstow in July 1862. That occasion was one of many in which the River Thames influenced this most famous of Oxford stories.

Godstow and Port Meadow also provided inspiration – artistic, poetic and romantic – for several of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, whose patron Thomas Combe, Superintendent of the Oxford University Press in Jericho, also helped to ensure the enduring fame of Wonderland.

Featuring historical waterside views and the Alice illustrations of Sir John Tenniel and Lewis Carroll himself, this talk will outline some of the local influences on these distinctively creative Victorians.

FREE illustrated talk by Mark Davies (see above).

150th anniversary talk: Alice in Waterland: once upon a time in Sandford, 150 years ago ..

Tuesday 3 July, 7.30pm

Village Hall, Sandford-on-Thames

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first telling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, on a picnic by the River Thames at Godstow on 4 July 1862. But it was also 150 years ago that Lewis Carroll and the real Alice shared another experience on the river – this time at Sandford – which became the inspiration for one of the most memorable episodes in the book: The Caucus Race. On a Victorian virtual cruise, learn about these and other ways in which the Thames influenced this most famous of Oxford stories: by providing the incentive for Carroll's inventive story-telling and in suggesting real people, places, and events as the basis for many of the characters and episodes. Refreshments will be available.

FREE illustrated talk by Mark Davies (see above), as a prelude to this year's Sandford Fete on Saturday 14th July, which will have an Alice & Wonderland theme.

150th anniversary talk: Alice in Waterland: once upon a time, in 1862 ...

Saturday 7 July, 3pm
Visitor’s Room Bar, Malmaison (Floor 3), Justice Walk, Oxford Castle

Talk outlining the importance of Oxford's waterways as the inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the relevance of this year's 150th anniversary – with reference to locations both upstream and downstream of Oxford, and to the Castle Prison itself.

FREE illustrated talk by Mark Davies (see above)

P.S. Malmaison mixologists have been concocting. To mark the very first telling of Alice in Wonderland, they have devised a selection of new and exciting Alice-inspired cocktails that will be available from the bar in the Visitor’s Room from noon.