Bicester Village

Extract from a guidebook to Britain, 2018

It takes no more than 45 minutes to arrive at Bicester Village by train from London. Marylebone Station offers information about the village in Chinese and Arabic. This is the post-European world. Once you arrive at Bicester Village, there are more signs in various languages. The station is neat and modern. It backs on to a carpark and the defining feature is a tax-reclaim office. The path to the village itself has been landscaped with due diligence. Given the season we visited there are traditional representations of the British reindeer in the parks, wearing woolly jumpers due to the time of year. These representations will alternate with the seasons. In the Summer there is a depiction of the famous British band The Beatles, wearing traditional 1960’s costumes. As you walk to the village, skirting another carpark, there’s a view of fields in the distance and an Anglo-Saxon church spire. These details are kept at a respectful distance from the village itself, as a homage to old England. The church might even have been constructed at the same time as the village, in order to provide suitable views for the visitors. Bicester Village is laid out in the traditional grid system. Its half-dozen streets are narrow, with gabled buildings. It is architecturally perfect. This perfection is enhanced by the fact that no-one lives here. Each of the one-story buildings contains a shop of some kind. Only the most respected, long-standing brands are present. The ones that are most associated with the timeless beauty of the classic British village. Swarovski, Polo, Hugo Boss, etcetera. This village is in so many ways perfect. It delivers the authentic British village experience whilst allowing you to purchase your favourite shopping items, safe in the knowledge that before you leave the village you can already claim back VAT tax on all purchased goods. There are many cafes where you can purchase traditional croissant for breakfast or other classic British dishes for lunch. Some eating establishments remain open until 8pm. They are staffed by kind-hearted European young people who have come from afar afield as Slovakia or Ireland to enjoy the experience of being working British villagers. These young people are kind and spend all of the day practicing their smiles. As you shop, do not forget to enjoy the experience of promenading through the old-world streets of Bicester Village which have been designed to enhance your pleasure of the shopping experience in a traditional British village, allowing you to experience both the excellence of the British consuming experience and the quiet pleasures of traditional Britain, the land of Stonehenge, smurfs, kings and queens and the opium wars.