Crime Hotspots: Oxford

Given the fierce rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge universities, everyone connected with the latter must have rubbed their hands with glee when Morse was on the television.

The Oxford of Morse is still a romanticised place, life centres around the University colleges and quaint little pubs serving real ale, and the town is awash with opera fanatics. But lurking amongst its dreaming spires are murderers aplenty.

Episode after episode is described as the death of an academic of some sort, usually of the more civilised subjects Classics, History, Literature etc (little if any reference is made to those involved in its Engineering department). Coming to Oxford as a student, don, professor, or visiting lecturer was portrayed as an undertaking thwart the danger. Much safer to go to Cambridge which, to my knowledge, hasn’t been the setting of any major crime show (spies, rather than murderers are Cambridge’s thing).

I wonder what effect the depiction of Oxford as a hot bed of murder and deceit had on the number of applications to its prestigious seat of learning? Probably very little as studying to enter Oxford probably doesn’t leave much time for crime drama – a lesson that would have served me well in my youth when my stunning academic career was sidetracked somewhat by Remington Steele, Moonlighting and Charlie’s Angels.