Alis Hawkins

If you're not with them you're against them. Oxford, 1883. Young men are being found bound, gagged and hooded at the gates of their colleges in the small hours. Basil Rice, Jesus College fellow, is asked by the senior proctor to investigate. But matters of sexual purity are dangerous, as it lays Basil open to unwelcome scrutiny of his own...

Amongst the scholars, secrets and soporifics of Victorian Oxford, the truth can be a bitter pill to swallow… Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man’s guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus College fellow with...

Why should the devil have all the best tunes? The Salvation Army has come prancing and singing from the slums of London to the poorest quarters of Oxford, but along with its red hot gospel preaching and music hall songs, it brings a prohibition message which sparks immediate opposition and violence. An Army soldier, an ex-drunk, is brutally killed, and...