From foreword of Paulina Kewes:
This book illuminates the history of the collegiate University as an institution and community – or perhaps a host of institutions and communities. It gives an effective overview of Oxford’s development and change over the centuries and explains its rather byzantine structure and mode of operation before homing in on its current situation in the wake of Brexit and assessing its challenges. The book will be of special interest to Polish readers not just because, based on extensive research, it reveals the workings of a university everyone has heard of. However, few know much about it, also because its argument draws on the author’s intimate, behind-the-scenes knowledge of the place and a plethora of interviews with those who have studied here. There could be no better insight into Oxford than through the people, even if what they say has to be critically analysed and assessed.