A Northerner In Oxford

The North-South divide is not a new feature of English life.

If a starting point for the rivalry had to be chosen, the Harrying of the North in 1069 - which laid waste to large parts of Northern England - would be a suitably dramatic one.

But, almost a millennium later, things are starting to change.

With Andy Burnham’s commitment to devolution and the establishment of Number 10 North, political power is expanding beyond Westminster. Greater Manchester has transformed from an industrial powerhouse into one of the fastest-growing economies in the UK, increasingly driven by industries such as technology and media.

Despite these shifts in political and economic power, however, elite education remains geographically unequal.

Oxford University’s 2026 admissions report shows that, between 2023 and 2025, the North of England - comprising the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber - accounted for only 14.7% of admissions, despite making up approximately 23% of the UK population.

Yet the North also accounted for only 15.3% of applications. This suggests that the disparity emerges before admissions decisions are even made.

The figures raise broader questions about regional inequalities in education and opportunity.

These concerns have, however, been soothed by several southern friends, who were kind enough to enlighten me that “Oxford is Northern anyway”.

The question I am answering is not what it is like to be an Englishman in New York - Sting has already provided an adequate answer - but what it is like to be a Northerner in Oxford.

It is no secret that Northerners can take a joke. In fact, we tend to make ourselves the butt of it.

At a predominantly southern university, it is a trait you will often be glad of.

Someone might dismiss your admission as mere “quota filling” - a jibe only intensified by being a woman - or launch into the same tired monologue about the dangers of positive discrimination.

When your identity starts to be undermined by these jokes, as I see it, you are left with three options:

Accept it. Defend it. Or lose it.

Accept it

Let’s begin with the first option: choosing to laugh along with the joke instead of taking it to heart.

Personally, I have found this to be the easiest solution in the moment.

But to what end?

Do you simply reinforce your preordained role as the “friendly Northerner who can take a joke”?

The more your accent and expressions are remarked upon, the more you are transformed into a caricature - someone who is taken less seriously and made increasingly one-dimensional.

You are left with the internal battle of owning your cultural identity without allowing yourself to be defined by it.

You want to keep your accent without being accused of milking it.

How do you handle being told that you are exaggerating your pronunciation - often by people who have never been within 50 miles of your hometown, who also consider Oxford Northern and the Midlands a myth?

Defend it

What about the second option?

What if you call out these jokes and point to the ignorance and elitism behind them?

Well, then you become the Northerner with a chip on their shoulder.

The one who is miserable.

The one who can’t take a joke.

Lose it

So, if you can’t beat them, should you join them?

You start to lose the accent and drop the expressions. You begin calling it dinner instead of tea and pronouncing bath as “barth”.

You become more reserved in conversation. Subjects openly discussed at home suddenly become taboo.

With these changes, you might no longer stand out like a sore thumb - but at what cost?

An identity crisis, for one.

Then there is the lifetime of ridicule awaiting you when you return home and ask your friends for a “hair tie” instead of a bobble.

By no means am I suggesting that Northerners don’t have preconceptions of our own. For every caricature of the stupid Northerner, there is our caricature of the posh, self-important Southerner.

But I suppose that is the point.

Your identity only feels as though it comes into question when it ceases to be the norm.

At home, your accent doesn’t feel remarkable and your approach to conversation doesn’t feel strange, because both are reflected by the people around you.

You begin to notice them only when they are no longer reflected back.

But does this challenge have to be seen as a negative experience?

An opinion can only become more informed by being questioned. Perhaps the same is true of identity.

When things you have always taken for granted encounter a different set of norms, you are forced to choose which parts of your identity should be retained.

Being Northern requires little thought when everyone around you is Northern too.

After all, being loyal to a football team is easy when they are winning. It is only when they are losing that your support really means something.

Maybe our identities become stronger when they are a choice rather than an inheritance.

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Header image: Miss Vivienne Hall (second from right) and New College Oxford colleagues during matriculation.