University of Oxford Botanic Garden Middle-earth. In the Evelyn Waugh novel "Brideshead Revisited", Lord Sebastian Flyte takes Charles Ryder "to see the ivy" soon after they first meet. As he says, "Oh, Charles, what a lot you have to learn! There's a beautiful arch there and more different kinds of ivy than I knew existed. I don't know where I should be without the Botanical gardens" (Chapter One). In Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels "His Dark Materials", a bench in the back of the garden is one of the locations/objects that stand parallel in the two different worlds that the protagonists, Lyra Belacqua and Will
BBC television drama Mal Young, best known for producing Liverpool-set Channel 4 soap "Brookside", to head up the Drama Series section of the in-house Drama Department, which had become something of a poisoned chalice with many Controllers departing in quick succession. As Controller of Continuing Drama Series, Young oversaw the move to volume production and also commissioned a new medical Series, "Holby City". By the time Young left the BBC to join 19 Television Limited as head of Drama in December 2004, the BBC had increased Series production to nearly 300 hours per annum, including "EastEnders" at four times a week, "Holby City"