Stepping off Oxford’s famous High Street into a narrow thoroughfare named St Mary’s Passage brings the unsuspecting tourist face to face with a lion, or rather a lion’s head carved into a wooden doorway. Two golden fauns, clutching pan pipes, peer down from either side of the lintel, while further down the passage stands a Victorian lamppost. The conjunction of lion, faun and lamppost – all covered in a blanket of snow – is often claimed to be the inspiration for the first of the Narnia stories: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
But while it is
