Walking Tours of Oxford/Heidi Boon Rickard

OXFORD is renowned as a city of dreaming spires but in recent times it has gained a formidable reputation as the setting for the Colin Dexter crime mysteries.

Morse, Lewis and Hathaway are a trio of detectives who have captured the imagination of millions of television viewers worldwide, three sleuths who can unravel the most complex of cases.

So, ladies, gentlemen and any number of anoraks everywhere… lend me your ears. For if you want a trip around the haunts of the greatest crime-solvers since Sherlock Holmes hung up his deerstalker, then the person you need to see is Heidi Boon Rickard, a tour guide who is not only probably Britain’s leading authority on the crème de la crème of crime-crackers, but was also an acquaintance of the late Colin Dexter himself.

This is a generous, fact-crammed tour, two hours of non-stop information in which no ancient Oxford stone is left unturned, and every nook and cranny probed with an attention to detail that would undoubtedly meet with the approval of the dynamic threesome themselves.

There’s the college green where Morse suffered his fatal heart attack, the mediaeval Bear Inn, festooned with amputated ties, the Bridge of Sighs where Hathaway often paused to call Lewis… plus the numerous alleys and side streets where dark deeds were done and dastardly doings solved.

My advice? Don’t visit Oxford without taking this tour and getting on the trail of these three heroes of the small screen. It’s fabulous.

For information visit www.walkingtoursofoxford.com

John Phillpott