Photos

The tower at Oxford Castle features a pair of cross-shaped arrow slits, and in this image the sun can be seen peaking through one of the arrow slits. It is a puzzling fact that the diffraction pattern created of the sun’s rays resembles not a cross, but a symmetric six-pointed star. Perhaps the subtle message here is that the sun is after all a star, like 10^23 other stars.

I shot the scene on Kodachrome-25 slide film three decades ago, but just recently had it scanned. I was using a semi-automatic Miranda, the camera and the company that manufactured it having since become extinct.

The castle, and the city walls surroundings the town, were built by the Normands a few years after their successful invasion of Britain in 1066. Little of the original city walls remain, except the church, St. Michael’s at the North Gate, and parts of the walls on the grounds of New College. Until recent times Oxford Castle served as a high security prison in the heart of the great university town, and according to Oxford lore, it housed the ringleader of the infamous train robbery of the early 1960s. The police always monitored the man’s mail, hoping to discover where he had stashed the millions of pounds the ring had stolen. There was one series of letters, starting with the man’s wife writing to him, “Should I dig up the garden, and plant the potatoes?” A quick response followed from the man, “Under no circumstance are you to dig up the garden?” A few days later, another letter came from his wife, “Dear, the police came and dug up the garden!” Finally, a letter from the man to his wife followed, “Now you can plant the potatoes.” The money was never recovered.