Academic institutions in Britain have been infiltrated for years by dangerous theocratic fantasists. I should know: I was one of them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can't help feeling that's because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life.
It is time my colleagues got real. All British universities doing worthwhile research use animals, and, instead of hiding, they should be boasting of their achievements.
I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.
As a financial historian, I was quite isolated in Oxford - British historians are supposed to write about kings - so the quality of intellectual life in my field is much higher at Harvard. The students work harder there.
My parents didn't go to university and weren't brought up in England. They hadn't heard of any other universities other than 'Cambridge' or 'Oxford.'
The University of Westminster is well known for being a hotbed of extremist activity.
Professors of classics - not even a professor of English - professors of classics, they're something sacred; it's almost like being a priest.
I believe that Britain is becoming more class-conscious, and I quake at the very idea of Old Etonians ruling the world again.
Oxford has a slightly mythical rep, particularly for people who haven't been there.
Even if a university should turn out to be another version of a school, I had decided I could lose myself afterwards as an anonymous particle of the London I already loved.