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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, four permanent private halls, and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university, controlling its own membership and having its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. It does not have a main campus, but its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in a predominantly centralised fashion.

Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum, the world's oldest university museum; Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2023, the university had a total consolidated income of £2.92 billion, of which £789 million was from research grants and contracts.

Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 30 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. (Full article...)

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The Council of Keble College, Oxford ran the college (in conjunction with the Warden) from its foundation in 1868 until 1952. The council – a group of between nine and twelve men – has been described as "an external Council of ecclesiastical worthies", as most of the members came from outside the college, and many were not otherwise linked to the university. Keble was established by public subscription as a memorial to the clergyman John Keble. The first council members were drawn from the committee whose work had raised the money to build the college. By keeping matters relating to religion and the college's internal affairs in the hands of the council, the founders hoped to maintain Keble's religious position as "a bastion of 'orthodox' Anglican teaching" against the opponents of Tractarianism. In total, 54 men served on the Council, 11 of whom were college alumni; in 1903, Arthur Winnington-Ingram (Bishop of London) became the first former Keble student to join the council. It ceased to exist after 9 April 1952, when new statutes of the college placed full management in the hands of the Warden and Fellows. (Full article...)

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Cosmo Gordon Lang (1864–1945) was an Anglican clergyman who served as Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford from 1882 to 1886, was President of the Oxford Union and co-founder of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. As Archbishop of Canterbury during the abdication crisis of 1936 he took a strong moral stance, and comments he made in a subsequent broadcast were widely condemned as uncharitable towards the departed king. In his early ministry Lang served in slum parishes in Leeds and Portsmouth before his appointment in 1901 as Bishop of Stepney in London. In 1908 Lang was nominated Archbishop of York, despite his relatively junior status as a suffragan bishop. At the start of World War I, Lang was heavily criticised for a speech in which he spoke sympathetically of Kaiser Wilhelm II. After the war he supported controversial proposals for the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, but after acceding to Canterbury he took no practical steps to resolve this issue. As Archbishop of Canterbury he presided over the 1930 Lambeth Conference, which gave limited church approval to the use of contraception. (more...)

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Pembroke College was founded in 1624 and named after William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, who was Chancellor of the University at the time. Pembroke's coat of arms contains the English rose and Scottish thistle to represent King James I, in whose reign the college was founded, and three lions rampant from the arms of the Earl of Pembroke. The college was established on the site of a university hostel for law students dating from the 15th century, called Broadgates Hall, with money provided by Thomas Tesdale (a merchant from Abingdon) and Richard Wightwick (a Berkshire clergyman). It is located just to the south of the city centre, opposite Christ Church. It has gradually expanded in size, with further buildings added in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. There are about 400 undergraduates and about 120 postgraduates. Alumni include the lexicographer Samuel Johnson (although he did not complete his degree because of lack of funds) and James Smithson (whose bequest founded the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.). J. R. R. Tolkien was a Fellow of Pembroke for twenty years, writing The Hobbit and the first two books of The Lord of the Rings during this time. Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in under four minutes, is a former Master of the college. (Full article...)

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Credit: Romanempire

Magdalen College on May Morning. By tradition, revellers gather outside the college at 6am on 1 May (many having attended all-night balls and parties) and the college choir sings madrigals from the top of Magdalen Tower.

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Did you know

Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:

... that the Australian lamington cake (pictured) is believed to have been named after Charles Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, the then-Governor of Queensland?
... that William Havard, who was bishop of two Welsh dioceses (St Asaph, then St David's), once represented Wales in an international rugby union match?
... that Robert Gentilis graduated from Oxford aged 12 and became a Fellow of All Souls College aged 17, below the minimum fellowship age of 18?
... that cricketer Roger Kimpton also won an Oxford University tennis tournament and a golf blue, and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross as a Second World War fighter pilot?
... that when scholar Spencer Barrett’s tax return was challenged, he showed that to understand a text of Pindar he had to know how Mount Etna had appeared to a passing sailor?

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“

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all – the colleges I mean – like an opera.

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— W. B. Yeats, aged 23, in a letter to Katharine Tynan (1888)

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