The Oxford University Natural History Museum ‘On what side - your mother’s or your father’s - are you descended from an ape?’ This scathing put-down from Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, was ably fielded by its target, Thomas Henry Huxley, scientist, and proponent of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. ‘I’d rather be descended from an ape,’ he said (allegedly), ‘than [...]
Oxford’s Libraries – The Bodleian Home to more than 100 libraries, Oxford is one of the most bookish cities in the world. Each of its 38 colleges has at least one library, some have two or three and Magdalen college has five! Every faculty has a specialised subject library and the mother of them all is the great Bodleian library. [...]
Ashmolean Musuem Had a certain widow not been found tragically (and some thought suspiciously) drowned in her garden pond, then Oxford’s oldest and largest museum might never have come to be. The unfortunate victim was the former wife of John Tradescant the Younger. Her recently deceased husband had left his collection of ‘rareities’ to his friend Elias Ashmole, who had [...]
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