By OISE Oxford tutor Kit Villiers
I was intrigued to see that David Cameron invited Monsieur Hollande, the French President, to dine at the Swan Inn at Swinbrook during their recent meeting in the UK. Well, I suppose this pub is in his Witney constituency. But how did he get a reservation? In recent years the Swan has become one of the 'in' places to be seen at, and I know from personal experience how hard it is to get a table there. Perhaps you need to be in the Chipping Norton set to swing it....
Both gentlemen apparently contented themselves with Old Hookeys, no doubt suggested by the local man (Dave) to his Gallic visitor, and I can't fault him there. But I did think they both let the side down a bit by both ordering just half pints. The landlord can't have been very amused, especially as judging by the photo I saw they seemed to have cleared most other good folk (i.e. the regular drinkers) out.
Actually it wouldn't only have been the landlord who might have regretted this parsimony. The Swan is owned by the youngest (and now only surviving) Mitford sister, Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. In fact I imagine the knowledge getting around that what was not a particularly noteworthy pub is now in the hands of one of the famous band of sisters is what has made it so popular in recent years.
What, you've never heard of the Mitfords? There were six of them, and at least five became famous (or infamous) in their own right. They were the daughters of Lord Redesdale, a fairly eccentric Swinbrook resident, and several of them are buried at the church at Swinbrook. In those days we lived in Leafield, not so far away, and my mother recalls paying a visit in 1948 just after perhaps the most notorious sister, Unity, was buried there, when the grave was still fresh. Unity was madly in love with Hitler with whom she's supposed to have had a bit of a fling, and then shot herself when the war didn't end as she and Adolf had hoped.
Buried next to Unity is Nancy, the oldest sister, the well-known author, and now there is a relatively new grave, that of Diana: she was almost as notorious as Unity as she married Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Fascists, he of the famous Black Shirts. One thing that always intrigues me about the Mitfords is that between them they represented the political extremes. You've got Unity and Diana on the extreme right, and Jessica, the writer of, for example, 'The American Way of Death', on the extreme left, running away to support the Communists in the Spanish Civil War.
If you want to know what they looked like, there are pictures of all the girls - society beauties in their day - in the Swan; just ask David Cameron to book you a table.
I was intrigued to see that David Cameron invited Monsieur Hollande, the French President, to dine at the Swan Inn at Swinbrook during their recent meeting in the UK. Well, I suppose this pub is in his Witney constituency. But how did he get a reservation? In recent years the Swan has become one of the 'in' places to be seen at, and I know from personal experience how hard it is to get a table there. Perhaps you need to be in the Chipping Norton set to swing it....
Both gentlemen apparently contented themselves with Old Hookeys, no doubt suggested by the local man (Dave) to his Gallic visitor, and I can't fault him there. But I did think they both let the side down a bit by both ordering just half pints. The landlord can't have been very amused, especially as judging by the photo I saw they seemed to have cleared most other good folk (i.e. the regular drinkers) out.
Actually it wouldn't only have been the landlord who might have regretted this parsimony. The Swan is owned by the youngest (and now only surviving) Mitford sister, Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. In fact I imagine the knowledge getting around that what was not a particularly noteworthy pub is now in the hands of one of the famous band of sisters is what has made it so popular in recent years.
What, you've never heard of the Mitfords? There were six of them, and at least five became famous (or infamous) in their own right. They were the daughters of Lord Redesdale, a fairly eccentric Swinbrook resident, and several of them are buried at the church at Swinbrook. In those days we lived in Leafield, not so far away, and my mother recalls paying a visit in 1948 just after perhaps the most notorious sister, Unity, was buried there, when the grave was still fresh. Unity was madly in love with Hitler with whom she's supposed to have had a bit of a fling, and then shot herself when the war didn't end as she and Adolf had hoped.
Buried next to Unity is Nancy, the oldest sister, the well-known author, and now there is a relatively new grave, that of Diana: she was almost as notorious as Unity as she married Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Fascists, he of the famous Black Shirts. One thing that always intrigues me about the Mitfords is that between them they represented the political extremes. You've got Unity and Diana on the extreme right, and Jessica, the writer of, for example, 'The American Way of Death', on the extreme left, running away to support the Communists in the Spanish Civil War.
If you want to know what they looked like, there are pictures of all the girls - society beauties in their day - in the Swan; just ask David Cameron to book you a table.
