Oxford
Attributed to an unnamed “one wit”¹, it’s a play on Matthew Arnold’s 1866 epithet “City of dreaming spires”.
Mum – 1990s²
Pauline Iliff (Dixon) – mother of Mark, JM, G & Bel
¹…though one source attributes it to the journalist and green activist George Monbiot
²I’m fairly certain I heard it several decades earlier, but can’t track it down
—Mark