Sir – Last weekend I, along with 25,000 others, entered the hallowed halls and secret gardens of Oxford during the Open Doors event.

A city which has often seemed to me to present an unfriendly face to tourists, with its locked gates and forbidding signs, was suddenly revealed in all its beauty.

A lively West Indian lady summed up the experience by saying: “I have lived in Blackbird Leys for 20 years and I never knew there were palaces behind those college doors.”

I returned home to Headington with spirits high, only to discover that my teenage son had been set upon by a group of youths in Bury Knowle Park who had thrown stones and insults at him for no apparent reason.

A weary community policewoman seemed strangely resigned to the inevitability of such incidents among young people who are terminally bored and who have so few prospects in life.

The tragedy of the last 12 years of the Blair/Brown government is that town and gown are as far apart as they ever were. The spirit of the Swindlestock uprising has been sublimated into a depressing nihilism and acceptance that the gates of Oxford will remain firmly shut to far too many of its citizens.

D Gordon Headington