(First published in Radley News February 2026) By Victoria Bentata Azaz
Oxford’s spies have traditionally kept a low profile, not wanting to be tarred with the same brush as the Cambridge spies, who were of course traitors.  However, the city has educated a remarkable number of loyal agents, whose work has led to many unsung victories and even helped win World War II.
The most successful spy was surely Frederick W Winterbotham.  He was born in Gloucestershire in 1897 and joined the Gloucestershire Yeomanry in WWI, being put in charge of training ‘100 Bristol butcher boys’ to handle 100 horses.   His spirits were rather dampened when the army subsequently put his horses on trains to be turned into meat whilst his cavalrymen were issued with bicycles.  He decided instead to fly, joined the Royal Flying Corps, was soon shot down and became a POW for the rest of the war.  However, his experience in Germany and acquisition of the German language was later to prove extremely useful.  
Demobbed, and because all the friends he was planning to go to Cambridge with had been killed, he went to study at Christ Church in Oxford.  On his arrival the Dean, who was keen to re-start the college’s equestrian sports, put him in charge of assembling a beagle pack and teaching the students to hunt and play polo (so there is a possibility that he came galloping through Radley at some point…).  After a short two years he acquired a law degree but working in a solicitor’s office reminded him of his imprisonment and he elected to become a farmer instead. Sadly, farming paid so poorly he eventually had to look for another job.  It was at this point that he was recruited to found the RAF section of the Secret Intelligence Service. 
One of his agents, a Baltic German Baron called Billy de Ropp, turned out to know another Baltic German called Alfred Rosenberg, who was right hand man to a certain Adolf Hitler. In 1934, Billy suggested that Winterbotham invite Rosenberg to London to meet some important people.  Rosenberg was duly impressed and reciprocated (which had been the plan all along).  So the head of secret RAF intelligence was now invited to lunch with Hitler’s top generals, where they openly told him not only the size of their forces, but also of their plans to invade the Soviet Union and precisely how they were intending to do it.
His advice for aspiring agents: ‘Never ask a direct question, talk to them as if you have known them all your life and as though you admire them.’  It seemed the Nazis were longing to talk to people and felt they could talk to the British, not the French or the Italians, but they were great admirers of the British. Charm, it seems, was his secret weapon and so successfully did he wield it, that he was eventually taken to see the Führer himself, by whom he seems to have been rather amused, though he was absolutely clear that Hitler was in total charge and nobody was pulling his strings. This acquaintanceship opened doors to wherever he wanted to go.   ‘All the information that I gathered was given to me on a plate, because originally I was a friend of Hitler’s, or not a friend but I knew the Fuhrer and he had accepted me.’
The only problem Winterbotham had was persuading the British authorities that what he was telling them was true…. 
He wrote several books including The Ultra Secret and The Nazi Connection.  If you want to know more about him, you have only to go to the Imperial War Museum’s website where you can listen to 36 half-hour recordings of him telling his life story. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80007264
If you want to hear more about Oxford’s secret history, gather a group of friends and book a WWII tour of Oxford with me. www.oxfordcitywalks.co.uk

It turns out that St Hilda's College, a former women's college and the last Oxford college to go mixed, has a significant link to one of Japan's most famous female educators.
Umeko Tsuda, whose picture graces the ¥5,000 note (above) was one of the first women sent to England by the Japanese Empress in 1899.
 She stayed at St Hilda's college for an entire term and evidently remembered it very fondly.  In correspondence between Ume Tsuda and the Principal of St Hilda's, Mrs Burrows, she says 'I shall often think of my term at Oxford as such a pleasant experience' and the Principal remembers Tsuda giving 'a very comprehensive and interesting lecture on the Past and Present of Japanese Women' with an audience of 70 and concludes ' We parted with much regret from this charming and high-minded little lady'.
In 1900 Ume Tsuda founded what is today one of the most prestigious women's educational institutions in Japan, Tsuda University in Tokyo, whose students are still coming to visit Oxford each year.
St Hilda's today remembers Ume Tsuda with a plaque and a plum tree, Ume being the Japanese word for plum.
Since Ume Tsuda, Oxford has become a favourite with Japanese royalty:  In 1921, Crown Prince Hirohito visited and so enjoyed watching the rowing that he donated a golden Chrysanthemum Medal, originally worn by the cox of Exeter College's first eight for the Oxford bumps races.
In 1925, Prince Chichibu, the son of Emperor Taisho came to study at Magdalen College. There is a Pathé newsreel of him being taught to scull by the King's Bargemaster. 
Today's Emperor Naruhito also loved the Thames and while studying at Oxford (from 1983) researched trade on the Thames for a dissertation.  He even wrote a memoir entitled The Thames and I. His wife, Empress Masako, is also an Oxford alumna, having studied International Relations at Balliol.  In 2024, the Imperial couple visited their alma mater and planted trees at their respective colleges.
The most recent royal to study at Oxford is the most educated so far.  Her Imperial Highness Princess Akiko, second cousin to the Emperor, went so far as to achieve a DPhil.  Her particular interests are in how Japanese culture, tradition and art are perceived by westerners.  Her recent bestselling book Aka to Ao no Gown (Red and Blue Gown) is all about her time in Oxford.

Resplendent in bright red robes, Lord William Hague of Richmond entered the Sheldonian Theatre through its magnificent main door at 11am on 19th February 2025.  He advanced through a sea of faces and medieval academic gowns to the centre of the University of Oxford’s great ceremonial hall. Directly beneath the University’s highest value, Truth, perched on her cloud in the middle of Robert Streater’s magnificent ceiling, he took his seat.
After much doffing of caps and several Latin formulae, Vice-Chancellor Irene Tracey admitted Lord Hague to the degree of DCL (Doctor of Common Law) and presented him with the Keys to the University and the University Seals (pictured above).
As the choir of his college, Magdalen, struck up My soul, there is a country by Hubert Parry, the new Chancellor was disrobed of his red gown and re-robed in the Chancellor’s black and gold robe and gold-tasselled cap.  The V-C then pronounced the invocation ‘Domini Doctores, vosque Magistri Universitatis, habetis Cancellarium’ and to the sound of trumpets and resounding applause, vacated the Chancellor’s Throne so that Lord Hague could take his appointed place.  
The Public Orator addressed a welcoming oration from the Proctor’s box in Latin, briefly in Welsh, but mainly in English, wished Hague’s predecessor Lord Patten of Barnes a ‘Shabbat shalom’ and hoped for Lord Hague ‘all that is good, fortunate and auspicious’.  
The new Chancellor who, once appropriately gowned, appeared to grow in stature and to exude a commanding and authoritative presence, took the stand for the next 20 minutes.  His speech was by turns witty, inspiring and impressive. You can watch it here – (and the boots at the side of the screen to the left of his head belong to me!)
 https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-02-19-lord-hagues-chancellor-admission-speech
It was an unforgettable event, the first of its kind for 21 years and (we hope) will not occur again for another 10 years, the term of Lord Hague’s Chancellorship.  I felt immensely privileged to be present.

Meet Tom, Christ Church's famous clock. He chimes 101 times at 9 o'clock (Oxford Time) each night. This was the time of the centuries-long curfew, designed to separate the students from the townspeople and prevent Town and Gown riots. It should be noted that Oxford Time is five minutes after London time as we are 1 degree west of the Greenwich Meridian.  Legally, Oxford Time no longer exists, since with the advent of the railways it just became too complicated to have different times in every town and railway time (London time) was eventually applied to the entire country.  However, Oxford (and Christ Church in particular) is reluctant to shed its traditions, so Christ Church preserves Oxford Time in the 5 minutes extra it claims before the tolling of Great Tom.

This is Luke Jerram's fabulous Oxford Astra-Zeneca Nanoparticle.  It is enlarged 1 million times and was made to commemorate the 10 millionth UK Covid jab.  He made 6, sold 5 and made £17.5k for Médecins sans Frontières.

Come and visit it at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science!  (Booking required, closed Mondays)

This is an article published in the now defunct Oxford Today on 12th February 2014 at the time of the Sochi Olympics.  The online link has been removed and I thought it a pity to let it go to waste.  I shall post the second installment shortly.

12 February 2014  Oxford Today
Oxford’s Early Russian Connections 
By Victoria Bentata
The first of a two-part series studying the city’s ties with the current Olympic hosts.

While the Olympics is in full flow at Sochi, physical exertion has not often figured highly in Oxford’s contacts with Russia — though ‘good sport’ has undoubtedly been had by several high profile visitors, and the study of Russian is today enjoying one of its most successful periods ever. 

Oxford University’s first serious engagement with Russian was in 1696, when philologist Edward Bernard persuaded the Oxford University Press to buy a Cyrillic font from a Dutch printer in order to publish a Russian Grammar written in Latin by a German called Ludolf.  Bernard thought it would be ‘a useful booke to our Russian merchants’.  This was the first ever printed grammar of Russian and guaranteed Oxford a place in the history of Slavonic studies.  

Its publication presaged an unusual visit a couple of years later, in April 1698, by ‘a very uncouth fellow’ dressed in an enormous, scruffy black wig and a black kaftan with gold buttons, whose dirty hands were ‘scratched as though from scabies’. Tsar Peter the Great, taking time out from his study of shipbuilding on the London docks, arrived incognito and stayed in the Golden Cross Inn, where he clearly enjoyed a good evening — helped along by a couple of bottles of brandy and four bottles of sack wine. When he visited the Ashmolean the next morning (for all of fifteen minutes), the innkeeper accompanied him in his carriage.  Heading across the road to Trinity College chapel, he realised that he had been recognised and that people were flocking to follow him. Irritated by the crowd, he simply turned tail and headed back to London.  

Later Russian visitors stayed slightly longer. Five young men arrived to study in Oxford in 1766.  Unfortunately, two left with medical problems apparently occasioned by too much reading — no, really —  and three ended up in the debtors’ jail. Nikitin, the man supposedly supervising their stay, was taken to court by the warden of Merton. Eventually, the Russian government took charge of the situation and repaid the students’ debts, while Nikitin, together with Suvorov, one of the students, was eventually admitted as an MA and wrote a book on trigonometry.  In 1803 Suvorov published one of the first English Language Training books, designed to teach Russians English in 30 lessons.  

Diplomatic overtures were made during the late 18th century when the first Russian received an Honorary Doctorate from the University.  He was Russia’s Minister to the Court of St James, Count Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov, who was apparently no more than 22 years old at the time, but did go on to have a creditable career as Russia’s Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

The most impressive Russian visit came in 1814, though, when Tsar Alexander I was invited to the University for a premature celebration of Napoleon’s downfall (together with the Prince Regent and the King of Prussia) and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law (DCL).  The Allied Sovereigns attended a magnificent banquet for 200 at the Radcliffe Library and a ‘cold collation’ in the Codrington Library.  Although accommodated in more regal style than his illustrious predecessor — in the Queen’s Room in Merton — it is recorded that the Tsar slept on a mattress on the floor, whilst his sister Ekaterina Pavlovna occupied the bed. Edward Nares, then Regius professor of Modern History, further records that the Tsar’s four servants ‘slept in their clothes on the landing place of the staircase, and did no small damage, by their foreign habits, and disregard of the value of the furniture’. 

This clearly didn’t upset the Warden, however, who was so excited that he personally paid for two stained-glass imperial eagles to be installed in the bedroom windows, which grace it to this day. Alexander, too, evidently enjoyed his stay and such was his largesse that his gifts are still amongst the finest treasures of both Merton and Magdalen Colleges. Merton Chapel is home to an enormous green vase made of Siberian jasper with a complimentary inscription to ‘Merton College, its warden and fellows, most enlightened and venerable men, as a token of pleasant memory of the hospitality accorded during his visit to Oxford’. Magdalen’s President, Martin Routh, meanwhile, received a magnificent silver salver imprinted with the imperial double-headed eagle (above). A portrait of the Tsar, requested by the University, still adorns the Examination Schools.
Honorary DCLs were also conferred on the future Tsars Nicholas I in 1817 and Alexander II in 1839. However, possibly more deserving recipients were Ivan Turgenev, author of Fathers and Sons (and the first novelist ever to be awarded an Oxford honorary degree), and chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.

© Victoria Bentata

This is one of the last college barges still in existence.  Many date from the 19th century. Members of colleges would use the barges as changing rooms and common rooms and watch the Torpids and Summer Eights rowing races on the Isis (the local name for the Thames) from these barges. One of them was sold in 2014 -  asking price £150,000.   This one is hidden near Donnington Bridge.