Not much here yet, apart from an outline [thesis] layout with the first couple of chapters from my [DPhil thesis]. This conformed to the [Oxford University Graduate Studies Office] guidelines form GSO.21 when I handed my thesis in at the start of April 2003. Since then the guidelines have changed slightly, in that now (August 2005) the spacing between lines has to be at least 8mm and the left margin between 33 and 38mm (before it just had to be "typeset as for a professional publication" or something like that, double spacing was only required for typewritten theses). Uncommenting a line in Chapter00/initialsation.tex fixes this.
The layout was borrowed from J-P Stacey, who borrowed it from Charles Donald, who borrowed it from David Stevens, who (etc). I think J-P came up with the idea of redeclaring the \path variable in each chapter, so that figures could be kept in the same directory as the associated .tex file.