Yep, it is on listen again because I just did. Listen again, that is. And it did not sound like daleks this time. Must have been, erm, the white heat of policy making that was affecting the network at work.
Cambridge has produced some very different writers, less inclined to fantasy. I'm thinking here of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath! I've read more than a few articles which argue that the cold, damp and foggy atmosphere of Cambridge was an influence on them, though I think other landscapes were much more influential, the moors above Hebden Bridge and Cape Cod for example. Likewise, I think Tolkien was more influenced by the loss of his boyhood landscape and by places like Bowland and the Downs, if we are thinking in terms of landscape.
I would not underestimate the rigorous intellectual atmosphere of life as an Oxbridge don though. All academia is very competitive, but the nature of the short terms at Oxbridge compresses that atmosphere even more.
I think there is definitely something in the idea that it is the history of Oxfrod which has stimulated imaginations. In terms of the sense of history evoked by a place, I wonder if places such as York or Lincoln have stimulated fantastic (not necessarily fantasy) writing/art? The atmosphere of Whitby certainly prompted Bram Stoker to conjour up Dracula and it has stirred other writers since then - and while standing on Tate Hill pier with a storm brewing you
do start looking for black dogs!