Oxford Freemasons
A Social History of Apollo University Lodge
Over the past 200 years, many thousands of undergraduates have been initiated into membership of Apollo – the Masonic Lodge of the University of Oxford. These have included such diverse figures as Oscar Wilde, Osbert Lancaster, Samuel Reynolds Hole, Cecil Rhodes, Edward, Prince of Wales and his brother Leopold, Charles Canning, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Godfrey Elton and Roger Makins.
Drawing on archives held in the Bodleian Library, this book is the first serious attempt to set the story of Apollo in the context of Oxford life and learning as well as its wider social and political diaspora. From the devastating numbers lost in the First and Second World Wars, as well as those decorated for bravery, to the significant number of Olympians who were members of the Lodge, it also charts the Lodge's charitable work, its changes of location, social events and adaptation to twenty-first-century life in Oxford.
Illustrated with archival material, portraits and Masonic treasures, this is history in a minor key, but a minor narrative with major implications, documenting the remarkable numbers of Oxford freemasons with distinguished careers in government, law, the army and the Church.
About the Author
Joe Mordaunt Crook, C.B.E., F.B.A. is a celebrated architectural historian; he is a former Slade Professor and Waynflete Lecturer at the University Oxford, and a former Public Orator and Professor of Architectural History at the University of London.
James W. Daniel, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of Apollo for over fifty years and a former Grand Secretary (chief executive) of the Grand Lodge, has written and contributed to many publications on freemasonry.
