ALICE’S Day is here again and this time it will be even more spectacular than usual, marking 150 years since the publication of the first Alice in Wonderland story.

Tomorrow there will be Mad Hatter’s tea parties, storytelling and croquet to mark the city’s celebration of Lewis Carroll’s Alice legacy.

And 150 volunteer Alices from across the city have been recruited to mark the anniversary.

A variety of locations across Oxford will be transformed into wonderlands for one day, with events co-ordinated by The Story Museum.

The museum in Pembroke Street has been busily recruiting 150 Alices to ensure a spectacular launch to the day, and applications were “open to all, regardless of gender or age”.

Honor Dawkins-Stean, marketing assistant at the museum, said: “Everyone has been looking forward to this year’s Alice’s Day as it’s the 150th anniversary so it’s a special big celebration.”

All 12 chapters of the book will be played out across the city. For the chapters in which Alice meets the Gryphon, Mock Turtle and learns to dance a Lobster Quadrille, members of the public will be invited to learn to sing and dance their own version at Oxford University’s Natural History Museum.

And a Mad Hatter’s tea party with a giant wonderland cake will be held at the Story Museum.

Oxford Castle will be hosting a “Frabjous” food fair, with the Queen of Hearts enjoying croquet outside County Hall.

The more serious-minded Alice enthusiasts will be able to learn how she has been portrayed over the past 150 years, with original printing plates on display at the Bodleian Library and photographs of the real Alice Liddell shown in Christ Church library.

The date July 4, 1862, was the day it all began – a sunny afternoon when the Oxford mathematics don Charles Dodgson, known to the world as Lewis Carroll, took Alice Liddell and her sisters on a Thames boat trip upstream towards Binsey and Godstow.

The account of how he told the children a story about a little girl tumbling down a rabbit hole into a topsy-turvy world called Wonderland – and how the delighted 10-year-old Alice begged him to write it down – is well known.

But the world had to wait until 1865 to read the stories narrated to the girls.

The Alice’s Day celebrations were first staged in Oxford in 2005.