‘From Oxford to Wonderland via Otmoor: the real wonderlands that inspired Lewis Carroll’

A talk about Lewis Carroll, author of the Alice books, by Dr Franziska Kohlt of Oxford University, Editor of The Lewis Carroll Review. Dr Kohlt will examine the apocryphal suggestion that Carroll was inspired by the chequerboard field pattern of Otmoor, when viewed from Beckley, to introduce the chess game in 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland':  

".... and a most curious country it was. There were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges, that reached from brook to brook. I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!"   "Oh, what fun it is!" (chapter 7).

But she’ll also address much more.