Botley Road, which has been closed since April 2023 to accommodate expansions to Oxford railway station, reopened to the public this week. 

Originally scheduled for August, the reopening was pushed back to 20^th September due to repairs to the gas network under the road. The road is now open to both pedestrians and vehicles. The reopening also brings improved bus services, a new walkway and a cycleway that runs under the rail bridge.

The road serves as a main passage into the city centre. It spans from Botley, which sits on the A34 to the west of the city, to Frideswide Square, near Oxford railway station and next to the Said Business School. 

These developments form part of the Oxfordshire Connect programme. According to an information pamphlet provided by Network Rail, this infrastructure project seeks to build “a bigger, better station for everyone” and add “additional rail capacity for the future”. Plans include a new line linking Oxford and Cambridge and the reopening of the Cowley branch line. Network Rail estimates that the total cost of this scheme so far is £237.4 million, well above the initial estimate of £161 million.

Oxfordshire Connect justified their decision to close the entire road, rather than just one lane, with the intention to complete construction before the end of 2024. However, construction was delayed multiple times due to unforeseen circumstances, including the discovery of a Victorian brick arch under the road and complications with utility infrastructure. 

Local residents have previously expressed their frustration at these delays. Following the closure of the road in 2023, many local businesses reported that their trade was negatively affected. Layla Moran, MP for West Oxfordshire and Abingdon, took the issue to Parliament and met with Minister of State for Rail Peter Hendy in 2024 to discuss the ongoing closure. 

In response to the reopening, Layla Moran told Cherwell: “Whilst I feel relieved that the Botley road has reopened, it has come at long last after three and a half years of terrible disruption to the lives of my constituents…I promise to push for accountability, having requested that the National Audit Office carry out an investigation into why the cost of the project has now soared to £237.4 million”. 

Network Rail have released a statement upon the road’s reopening which acknowledged that the road closure had a “significant impact” on Oxford residents and that they are “sorry for the disruption and the frustration it has caused”. 

Although no date has been confirmed, the station renovations are expected to resume at a later point.

“What is a good life?” This axiological question, asked earnestly in the opening lines of James Graham’s The Standard of Living – playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket until December 12 – is often overlooked by the fractured and hyper-specialised discipline of economics. Yet for John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas motivated the ‘Keynesian revolution’ towards government intervention into the economy during the mid-20th century, it was the core motivation underpinning his life’s work. To Keynes, this so-called ‘good life’ is one replete with art and human connection, wherein the value of work lies in the leisure which it affords. However, Keynes’ dogged refusal to accept the state of the world tells us that, perhaps more fundamentally, a ‘good life’ is one characterised by a radical imagining of what a ‘better life’ might entail, and a tireless striving towards its realisation.  

This ethical framework seizes The Standard of Living, turning what might have become a dull affair about aggregate demand and the death of laissez-faire into a colourful portrait of a remarkable man. The play flits between Keynes’ bohemian life as a member of the Bloomsbury Group, and his attempts to influence the British government to intervene in the economy across two world wars and the Wall Street Crash. Throughout, Keynes’ deployment of economic theory is portrayed as an act of profound artistic expression, akin to the literature of Virginia Woolf or the painting of Vanessa Bell (fellow members of the Bloomsbury Group). Keynes’ affinity to the arts, which saw him found the Arts Council of Great Britain shortly before his death in 1946, is reflected in the incorporation of paintings by Cézanne and Degas into the stage design. Additionally, the frenzied ballet numbers which mark scene transitions foreshadow his marriage to the ballerina Lydia Lopokova (much to the shock of his friends and colleagues, who believed him to be homosexual). 

Rory Kinnear plays a reserved yet charming Keynes, providing glimpses of the charisma which convinced Douglas LePan to describe him as “the most beautiful creature I have ever listened to”. However, Natalia Osipova steals the show, in her theatre debut on sojournment from the Royal Ballet, playing a sharp, witty, and comedically Russian Lydia Lopokova. The highlight of the play is the meeting between Keynes and his great rival, the proto-neoliberal Friedrich Hayek, on the roof of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. The almost unbelievably true encounter sees Keynes and Hayek on fire warden duty during a Nazi bombing raid, still arguing the merits of their respective worldviews. The pair meet again during a feverish tango scene which places Hayek’s “we must tighten our belts” against Keynes’ “buy a new belt”. Other standout performances include Pip Carter’s drippingly sardonic Lytton Strachey, a fellow member of the Bloomsbury Group and a former lover of Keynes, and Laurie Kynaston’s Hayek, whose thin veneer of self-confidence masks both a bitter ideological resentment of Keynes the economist, and a deep personal admiration for Keynes the man.