Mark Johnstone Davies

I am an Oxford local historian, guide, public speaker and author. One of Oxford’s most experienced local historians, my tours and talks tend to focus on less-visited, less- appreciated aspects of the city, based on the themes of my books above: the waterways, Lewis Carroll’s Alice, historical crime, the first British men and women to fly, and I like to concentrate on local residents rather than people associated with the colleges. Oxford's waterways – the Thames, its many sidestreams, the Cherwell, and the canal – are a common, and distinctive, theme, inspired from having lived for nearly 30 years on a narrowboat on the Oxford Canal. I further distinguish myself from most other Oxford tours and talks by including a wide range of literary references. Famous authors such as Lewis Carroll, Philip Pullman, Thomas Hardy, and Colin Dexter often feature, as well as a host of lesser known, insightful, and/or amusing writers going all the way back to Geoffrey Chaucer.