It's always been my experience that British people are intensely proud of their history and heritage, stretching back into the ancient, unrecorded past; yet, they seem strangely oblivious to the "every day-ness" of it, absentmindedly dropping a letter into a Victorian postbox. All the postboxes in the UK belong to the sitting monarch and bear the royal crest of whomever is on the throne at the time, whether Victoria Regina, Edward VII, George VI, or Elizabeth II. If you spend your life reading and researching the Victorians, coming across something marked "VR" is a little more exciting than most people find mail boxes. Walking around Oxford is like a hundred nerdy-Christmases rolled into one.
