Speaking of Universities

by Stefan Collini

The statues finally selected to represent this ideal were grouped in threes. On one side were Darwin, Faraday and Watt; on the other were Beethoven, Virgil and Michelangelo; while the central trio comprised Shakespeare flanked by Plato and Newton. It was a clever compromise; science and engineering were represented by Faraday and Watt, both of whom came from the Midlands; the biological sciences by the great Darwin, who came from the neighbouring county of Shropshire, and mathematics and physics by the immortal Newton. And, of course, Shakespeare himself, who came from just down the road at Stratford, was another local boy made good. The Midlands connections of Plato, Beethoven, Virgil and Michelangelo were, it’s true, a little more elusive, but they nonetheless signalled the ambition of the university to be, in Lodge’s words again, not just an institute of applied technology, but a ‘school of general culture in the great European tradition’. There is much more that could be said about this example, but I’m sure you recognize the general point. Universities respond to local needs, but they also partake of a wider inheritance and therefore, I would suggest, also of an open-ended future.