English at Magdalen. Idyllic, fun, and hard work. Magdalen is one of the best colleges at the best university to study English. Why? The rest of the website should have convinced you that Magdalen itself is a great place to be, whichever subject you choose. But English….. ah, the subject of kings, gods, even.

Partly this is due to our tutors. Between them they cover every period that you study, and since the Oxford course is strongly historicist and study is based around periods of literature, this means that you can nearly always be tutored in college. Laurie Maguire, the senior tutor, does Renaissance, Restoration and Romantics, but especially Renaissance drama. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst does some Romantics, Victorians and 20th century, as well Prac Crit. Elisabeth Dutton does Old and Middle English, and the History Use and Theory of the English Language (which means we can call our degree ‘English Language AND Literature.) They’re all wonderful, all friendly, much more like friends than your teachers at school, and not a hint of tweed in sight. And they’ll let you study pretty much anything you want.

You’ll probably have two interviews – one will be a general one based on what you’ve read recently, and the other will be a mini Prac Crit, which you’ll have time to prepare. If you enjoy them, that’s a good sign, since it’s the first time you really get to show a passion for the subject outside the narrow A Level courses. You need to show the tutors that you read analytically and widely, and really love the English, and that you’ve done your own reading beyond set texts. Each term has 8 weeks, and so each week you’ll have two tutorials, as we do two papers concurrently each term. In your first year, this means Victorians in the first term, 20th century in the second, Old English in both since you need to learn a new language, and the final term to prepare for the first year exams and read some literary theory. Fortunately (for me) the Oxford course isn’t too theory based, although if you like it, you can easily do lots. (Don’t be scared by Old English: it’s fun and we used to read it to each other in the Bar, enacting Anglo Saxon beer-feasts.)

That’s the great thing about the course. It seems quite prescriptive – you must do each period of English literature, and everyone does Shakespeare as a separate paper – but within the paper heading you can do whatever you like for 8 weeks. It might not be wise to ignore Chaucer entirely when you’re doing Middle English, but you don’t have to study him. If you want to specialise in obscure poets, or spend lots of time researching 1950s Satanists, then you can. You get to know the tutors in college really well, but I recommend going to some lectures, if you want to hear the big names in the department, as well as challenge your ideas on a particular author or text. I go to about 6 a week, and that’s quite a lot for an English student. And English lectures never start before 10am. It’s the reading which takes up time. Libraries in Oxford are wonderful. The excitement of getting a first edition of Daniel Defoe and thinking, “I’m an undergraduate, and they let me read this??!!” is rather special. The college library is quite well stocked, especially for primary texts and you can take things out for a term. The English Faculty Library is about 5 minutes walk from Magdalen, and very comprehensive, although you can only take books out for a week, and the overdue fines are fierce. And, of course, there’s the Bodleian, which has almost everything, though you can’t borrow any of it. By the end of the first year you’ll have two essays a week, and be reading anywhere from one to ten books for each one. Which is quite a lot, and more than most other colleges. English at Magdalen is not an easy option. If you want to stay in bed til 2pm every day, you can, but you’ll need to balance that with all-night essay sessions. It’s hard work, but we love it.