A complete catalogue of authors connected with Oxford would reveal quite a list of 'riffe-raffe books'. Shakespeare used to stay in Oxford when travelling between his Stratford home and the theatres of London. Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde, WB Yeats, Shelley, Dylan Thomas and Iris Murdoch have all lived, studied and/or taught in Oxford, and the roll call shows no signs of ending.

Today's residents include award-winning authors Ian McEwan (winner of the 1998 Booker Prize) and Philip Pullman (winner of the 2002 Whitbread Award). Indeed, Pullman is the heir to a great Oxford tradition of writers whose works are enjoyed equally by children and adults, Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, CS Lewis and Kenneth Grahame among them.

Any tour of literary Oxford should begin at the ancient Bodleian Library, where one copy of every book and periodical published in Britain must be sent under the Legal Deposit scheme. The library now owns millions of volumes, stored on 80 miles (130 km) of shelving. Most are stored in the New Bodleian, on the opposite side of Broad Street, linked to the Old Library by an underground railway. Guided tours are available of the beautifully panelled rooms with their painted ceilings, and changing exhibitions display the highlights of the collection, including the original manuscript of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.

Grahame went to St Edward's School in Oxford - though he much preferred wandering by the Thames to sitting in a classroom, which is what inspired him to write his much-loved book. Grahame is now buried not far from the river meadows, in Holywell Cemetery, behind St Cross Church at the end of St Cross Road.

Next door to the Bodleian is Exeter College, where JRR Tolkien was a student before moving to teach at nearby Merton College. Here he ended his days as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, writing The Lord of the Rings in between tutorials on Old English and Old Norse.

The first part of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is now wowing cinema audiences all round the world. But there's no escape from Oxford even if you go and see its movie rival. Nearby Christ Church College [read our article] features prominently in Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone. In 1529 the Great Hall was built as the dining room for the newly founded college. Almost 500 years later it starred as Hogwart's Hall in the Harry Potter movie.

Well before the age of cinema, the great Tudor kitchens alongside the hall were the setting for an episode in Alice in Wonderland when the bad-tempered cook sprinkles her baby liberally with pepper and then instructs Alice to 'beat him when he sneezes' adding that 'he only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases!' Lewis Carroll had reason to know this hall well: under his real name of Charles Dodgson, he was a maths don at Christ Church and ate over 8,000 meals in the hall.

The real Alice was Alice Liddell, whose father was Dean of Christ Church from 1855 to 1891. Dodgson knew Alice and made up stories for her, which turned eventually into Alice in Wonderland. To the north of Christ Church, on St Aldate's, is the excellent Museum of Oxford where a display tells the life of this real Alice, while further south on the same street is Alice's Shop. Alice Liddell used to buy barley sugar here, and visitors can do so today, as well as an assortment of backward-running clocks, Mad Hatter teapots and other fun souvenirs.

For more adult refreshments, walk up St Aldate's through the town centre until you reach St Giles. Here on the left is the Eagle and Child pub, popularly known as the 'Bird and Babe'. Tolkien and CS Lewis, author of the Narnia stories, used to meet here to read each other's work around the warming fire. The pub still retains its old-world atmosphere, and lots of little recesses provide private places in which to enjoy literary conversation.

Opposite the pub is St John's College. And who went here? Why, Inspector Morse, of course - though that is a whole other literary detective story.