Huddled in the wood-panelled Rabbit Room of The Eagle and Child in Oxford, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis swapped manuscripts and dreamt up fantasy lands.
A century later, conversations around its historic benches may feel more sci-fi than fantasy, after it was bought out by an AI company hoping to change the world through technology.
The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), founded in the US by the billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has bought the pub from St John’s College with a pledge to refurbish and reopen it and create a new study space for tech dreamers.
The pub, which first opened in 1684, closed its doors in March 2020 because of the pandemic and has never reopened.
The new owners say it will be
