The term New Oxford Wits was applied, around 1980, to a group of young English writers who had been at the University of Oxford in the 1970s. It alludes to the Oxford Wits of the 1920s. Those supposed to be in the New Oxford Wits were Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Tina Brown, James Fenton, Ian Hamilton, Ian McEwan and Craig Raine.
Famous quotes containing the words oxford and/or wits:
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)
“Your wits can’t thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You’ve no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)