Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey

‘A time may come in your life’, Isolarion begins, ‘when you feel the need to make a pilgrimage.’ But when it does, how is a parent with a full-time job to respond to the call?

The answer is by starting close to home. Attlee takes us on a journey down one teeming, multicultural street in his neighbourhood, which connects the ancient university city with the car factory in Cowley. This is a different Oxford to the one we know from Brideshead and Inspector Morse, with its shops, restaurants, music venues and places of worship offering philosophies and flavours from across the globe. Why go the other side of the world, Attlee asks, when a world awaits discovery just outside your front door?

At once a charming road movie, a spirited defence of a pluralistic society and a call to celebrate the eclectic vitality of British cities, the message of Isolarion feels all the more timely at the beginning of the century’s third decade.