The King's Arms (colloquially known as the KA) is one of the main student public houses in Oxford, England. It is located in a prominent position on the corner of Parks Road and Holywell Street, opposite the New Bodleian Library building. Also nearby are Broad Street and the Clarendon Building, part of Oxford University. A popular local myth has it that the KA has the highest IQ per square foot of any pub or bar in the world. It was said that some dons held tutorials in the back bar as late as the 1960s. The pub is owned by Wadham College, which is located just to the north. Before Wadham reclaimed upper stories of the building in the 1960s, the Kings Arms had been a hotel, once popular with commercial travellers.
Its back bar was, until 1973, not open to women. There was a fire in that year, rumoured to have been started by radical feminists. The bar was temporarily closed, but reopened to both sexes.
Famous quotes containing the words king and/or arms:
“Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.”
—Eugene Field (1850–1895)
“The eyes that drew from me such fervent praise,
The arms and hands and feet and countenance
Which made me a stranger in my own romance
And set me apart from the well-trodden ways;”
—Petrarch (1304–1374)