Stuart Macbeth

"MY outlook on life has changed drastically,” Tommy Fiendish whispers over a mug of tea on London’s Kingsland Road.

The driveway at Studley Castle provides an impressive overture to Warner Leisure Hotels’ 14th adults-only short-stay location.

It’s enormously exciting to be where we are,” enthuses Nicola Creed, Executive Director of Garsington Opera, as the festival celebrates its 30th season.

IT WAS spring 1949. My hero found himself banging drumsticks against a double bass. An audition panel stared on. The venue was the ballroom at Butlins’ Ocean Hotel at Saltdean, near Brighton.

RICHARD, you’re a wild man. Has it really been 16 years since I last saw you? It would have been at one of those end of the century parties. I can see you now, staggering in through the hot July night, clutching a £1.99 bottle of plonk. High velocity guitar music and strobe lighting will have announced your entrance through the patio doors, illuminating yet another East Oxford kitchen.

Stuart Macbeth clicks his castanets and catches flamenco fever with dancer Amarita Vargas

WHAT’S your favourite romantic spot in Oxford? Actually I’m not asking.

LAST December, cruiserweight boxer Steve Ward climbed back in the ring at the age of 59. He lasted three rounds against a fierce 35-year-old, nicknamed the ‘One Man Riot’.

IN 1998 I remember standing in the queue at the old subterranean Co-op on Cornmarket Street, waiting patiently as my lunch hour clock ticked towards Doomsday.

With Oxford’s home of modern art celebrating its half-century, and other venues hosting some fascinating, and important, exhibitions, there has never been a better year to get out and explore the county’s galleries and museums. In the second of our looks ahead at the city’s big year of art, Stuart Macbeth picks his choice of 2016’s best shows within paintbrush-striking distance of Oxford