One of the most intriguing things about the world Deborah Harkness creates in A Discovery of Witches is how ordinary it often appears.
Witches walk through the streets of Oxford. Vampires sit in libraries. Daemons browse bookstores and meet friends for lunch. And most of the people around them never notice anything unusual.
Early in the novel, Diana Bishop leaves the Bodleian Library and does something completely ordinary. After spending the morning researching alchemy manuscripts, she stops for lunch in one of Oxford’s cafés. Students move in and out, cups clatter on tables, and the city continues its quiet academic rhythm.
It’s there that she meets Agatha Wilson.
To the people around them, Agatha looks like nothing more than a stylish woman enjoying tea in Oxford. But their conversation quickly reveals that something much larger is unfolding beneath the surface of this ordinary moment. Agatha is a daemon, and she begins explaining the rumors circulating through the creature world about Ashmole 782.
In the daemon community, she tells Diana, the lost manuscript is believed to contain the story of origins—not only of creatures, but perhaps of humans as well.
The conversation happens in the middle of a busy café, surrounded by students and tourists who remain completely unaware of what’s being discussed at the next table.
And that’s part of what makes the moment so fascinating.
Creatures live among humans, not apart from them.
The Covenant and the Ordinary World
For centuries, witches, vampires, and daemons have lived under the rules of the Covenant. Its purpose is simple: creatures must remain hidden and must avoid drawing attention to themselves.
That rule shapes how creatures move through the human world. They work as scholars, doctors, artists, and scientists. They sit in cafés, walk through markets, and attend university lectures. Their lives unfold in the same streets and buildings as everyone else.
The result is a strange coexistence. Creatures carry centuries of memory and power, yet they share everyday spaces with people who have no idea they’re there.
The café where Diana meets Agatha is one of those places.
It’s not magical in itself. It’s simply part of the daily life of Oxford.
But in that ordinary setting, the hidden world briefly reveals itself.
Oxford as a Living City
Oxford makes this blending of worlds possible.
Unlike many university campuses, Oxford isn’t separate from the town around it. Colleges, libraries, cafés, bookshops, and pubs are woven into the same narrow streets that people have walked for centuries. Students, professors, tourists, and local residents all move through the same spaces.
Many of the city’s pubs and tea rooms have histories stretching back generations. Some were already standing when Matthew Clairmont first walked through Oxford hundreds of years ago.
For someone like Matthew, the city must feel both familiar and strange. Buildings change, shops open and close, and new students arrive every year. Yet the rhythms of daily life remain surprisingly constant. People still pause for tea, share simple lunches, and gather with friends between lectures and research.
Across centuries, Oxford remains a city shaped by conversation and ideas.
Visiting Oxford: A Few Places to Begin
For readers who would like to experience the atmosphere of All Souls themselves, Oxford still offers many of the same streets, cafés, and pubs that appear in the novels.
You might start with The Turf Tavern, tucked down a narrow lane behind Holywell Street. It’s been serving students and scholars since at least the 1600s and remains one of Oxford’s most atmospheric pubs.
Another historic stop is The Bear Inn, one of the oldest pubs in Oxford, with roots stretching back to the thirteenth century.
For tea near the Bodleian, The Vaults & Garden Café sits beside the University Church of St Mary the Virgin and offers views of the Radcliffe Camera just steps away from Diana’s research world.
And if you’d like to visit the site of England’s first coffee house, The Grand Café occupies the location where coffee was first served in Oxford in 1650.
Walking through these places, it’s easy to imagine creatures sitting quietly among the students and visitors.
The World Hidden in Plain Sight
What makes the café scene in A Discovery of Witches so memorable isn’t the setting itself but what it represents.
Two women sit together discussing the origins of the creature world.
One of them is a daemon.
The other is a powerful witch who has spent much of her life pretending she’s human.
Around them, the café continues its ordinary routine. Students read books, sip tea, and talk about their day. No one notices that the future of the creature world may be unfolding quietly at the next table.
That’s the quiet brilliance of Harkness’s world-building.
The extraordinary doesn’t exist in some distant realm. It unfolds alongside the ordinary—sometimes in a library reading room, and sometimes at a small table where two women share tea and sandwiches while discussing the origins of the creature world.
In Oxford, the magical and the ordinary sit side by side.
Most of the time, no one notices the difference.
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Coming Friday
Next in Between the Lines we’ll turn to another question that sits quietly beneath the story.
Phoebe Taylor and the Choice of Immortality
Marcus offers Phoebe the possibility of eternal life. But her story raises a deeper question: what does it really mean to choose immortality—and can anyone fully understand that choice before making it?