Whether you’re keen to punt on the Isis, where the university’s rowing team trains for the fiercely contested Boat Race against Cambridge; or see priceless treasures in the Ashmolean Museum; or rise before dawn for May Morning, let your journey start here.

Dubbed ‘the city of dreaming spires’ by Matthew Arnold, Oxford has nurtured 70 Nobel Prize winners and is today a high-tech hub. Its Bodleian Libraries are the largest in the UK.

Home to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s no surprise that the city has nurtured so many authors – J. R. R. Tolkien, Oscar Wilde and T.S. Eliot among them.

Nestled in the surrounding Cotswolds, the city itself contains green oases: Christ Church Meadow, the 400-year-old Botanic Garden, and Port Meadow.

For something more sporty, visit Iffley Road Sports Centre, where Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile, or Corpus Christi College for the annual tortoise race.

Fearing for their future, these rosarians began collecting rare, old roses to save them from dying out while England’s gardeners were away fighting on the front. Where the Old Roses Grow tells the extraordinary story of how they did this, while the German bombers were scorching the skies, Hitler was advancing on their lives, and hope was being extinguished, month by month.

This is a tale of gardens and roses in wartime, and of fortitude and tenacity in the face of great loss and pain, but it is also a story of hope. It celebrates the achievements of an inspired group of rose lovers, who saved Britain’s favourite flower, so it could survive and bloom for future generations.