| From poets to
Prime Ministers, Cambridge University has tutored some of the most important figures in British
history.
From Charles Darwin to Professor
Stephen Hawking, the university has helped
to shape the minds of some of the world’s thinkers,
and as a result has changed common perceptions and misconceptions.
Cambridge University has taught more British Prime
Ministers than any other learning institution (13
in total), and is also the place where Lord Byron kept a teddy bear in his room and Emma Thompson developed her talent for acting.
It would be impossible to list all the famous and respected
names that have passed through the lecture halls of
Cambridge so we have chosen to concentrate on just a
few who have captured the imagination of the world.
William Pitt became the youngest
Prime Minister in British history in 1783 at
the age of 24 years old. Nicknamed “The Younger”
for obvious reasons, he was a Conservative MP who had
begun to take an interest in politics at the age of
seven. A child prodigy, Pitt graduated from Cambridge
University at the age of 17, then went on to study law
and was called to the bar at the age of 19. He was Prime
Minister for 18 years and died prematurely at the age
of 46 on 23 January 1806, unmarried and indebted, his
entire life having been given to the world of politics.
Alfred Edward Housman (or “ AE
Housman” as he preferred) actually attended rival
university Oxford but shamefully failed his final exams.
He began to write poetry and articles on the Classics
in his spare time to re-establish himself as a scholar
whilst working during the day at a Patent Office. It
wasn’t long before he was asked to take up an
appointment as Professor of Latin at
University College, London.
It was during this time that Housman wrote some of his
most famous poetry including A Shropshire Lad (1869) a series of poems about a nostalgic young man
who missed his home county. This helped to put Shropshire
on the map and saw many literary pilgrimages to the
area.
In 1911 Housman became Kennedy Professor of
Latin at Cambridge where his reputation as
a classical scholar continued to grow. He wrote further
Shropshire poems which were published in his Last
Poems (1922). Housman died in Cambridge but
his ashes were brought to Shropshire and buried near
the north door of St. Laurence’s Church in Ludlow.
Edward Morgan (EM) Forster was born
in 1879 and attended King’s College, Cambridge,
from 1897 to 1901. After graduating he travelled to
Italy and Greece with his mother, and on his return
he began to write essays and short stories for the liberal Independent Review.
In 1905 his first book Where Angels Fear To
Tread was published and by 1907 he had written
two more books: A Room With A View and The Longest Journey.
Much of Forster’s work has been turned into films
including A Passage To India, Maurice and Howards End. A Passage To India
was to be Forster’s last novel and he devoted
himself to other activities away from writing for the
last 46 years of his life. He died in 1970.
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