A person seldom forgets his way around the town where he spent his student years, so Briggs found himself in front of the hand-painted sign of the History Faculty of the University of Oxford without undue difficulty. When he was a student, he struggled to recall, wasn’t this the Social Studies Faculty Centre? He shrugged his shoulders, they must have relocated, and stared up at the fine Ashlar front of the two-storey building. There he read the inscribed date of 1880 and the edifying Fortis et Veritas on the right. A smug smile twisted his lips since Oxford was teeming with these erudite messages: only an elite could interpret them, including himself. His eyes strayed to the blue and gold painted dial off the clock in the gable whose hands, emerging from a flaming sun confirmed what he alr
