漫步英格兰

Madame Tussauds Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LR This is the famous waxworks started by Madame Tussaud in 1835 and is now one of the most popular tourist attractions in London with over two million visitors a year. There are wax models of the famous and infamous from every walk of life. So whether you want to mingle with kings and queens or the latest pop stars, this is the place to go. New models are being produced all the time while have-beens are quietly removed from display and put into storage. Over the years hundreds of celebrities have made their way to Madame Tussaud's 'stage door' to be received in the private studio where the sculptor makes precise measurements and photographs the subject's head from every possible angle. Highlights include the Chamber of Horrors which is the home of many notorious figures such as a Jack the Ripper scene with victim but no Ripper, and the Grand Hall where you will find all manner of celebs, from Bill Clinton to Michael Jackson and Pavarotti to Mandela. Another highlight is 'The Spirit of London' - exhibition which covers a period of more than 400 years and spans London's history from Elizabethan times to the present day, capturing the essence of London's pomp and circumstance. Sights, sounds and even smells combine to tell the colourful story of Britain's capital city to visitors travelling in cars specially designed to resemble London taxicabs but thankfully, without the drivers! Indeed, the cars were actually made by the same company who build real London taxis! Over 70 figures are involved in 'The Spirit of London' many of which are animated and fused with a host of special effects. Before Madame Tussaud had established herself in London, her collection of wax figures toured all around the country in wagons and caravans. Her macabre collection of relics from the French Revolution, alongside portraits of torturers, villains and murderers, proved irresistible to the visiting public. To protect society ladies of a delicate temperament, the collection of unsavoury characters was kept distinct from the rest of the exhibition in an area known as 'The Separate Room'. In 1846 the satirical magazine, Punch, coined the term 'Chamber of Horrors'. In today's chamber you will find one of Jack the Ripper's victims in an eerily realistic reconstruction of one of the narrow streets he stalked, whilst another scene shows the murderer John Christie, at his court sentencing and hanging! Open every day of the year except Christmas day, it should take you about two hours to get around the whole place. Adjoining Madame Tussaud's is the London Planetarium. If you want to make a day of it you can buy a combined ticket for both Tussauds and the Planetarium but beware that children under 5 are not admitted to the Planetarium. University of Cambridge A Brief History Introduction The University of Cambridge is rich in history - its famous Colleges and University buildings attract visitors from all over the world. But the University's museums and collections also hold many treasures which give an exciting insight into some of the scholarly activities, both past and present, of the University's academics and students. The University of Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world and one of the largest in the United Kingdom. Its reputation for outstanding academic achievement is known world-wide and reflects the intellectual achievement of its students, as well as the world-class original research carried out by the staff of the University and the Colleges. Many of the University's customs and unusual terminology can be traced to roots in the early years of the University's long history, and this booklet looks to the past to find the origins of much that is distinctive in the University of today. Early Records When we first come across Cambridge in written records, it was already a considerable town. The bridge across the River Cam or Granta, from which the town took its name, had existed since at least 875. The town was an important trading centre before the Domesday survey was compiled in 1086, by which time a castle stood on the rising ground to the north of the bridge, and there were already substantial commercial and residential properties as well as several churches in the main settlement which lay south of the bridge. Within the town, or very close to it, there were a number of other religious institutions. There had been canons in the Church of St Giles below the castle before 1112, when they moved to a new site across the River Cam at Barnwell, and the Convent of St Radegund had existed since 1135 on the site which eventually became Jesus College. There were also two hospitals, one reserved for lepers at Stourbridge, and a second, founded for paupers and dedicated to St John, which after 1200 occupied the site where St John's College now stands. Seventeen miles north of the town was the great Benedictine house of Ely which, after 1109, was the seat of a Bishopric. There was thus much to bring clerks (clergymen) to the town, but traders were also attracted to it. After about 1100 they could reach Cambridge easily by the river systems which drained the whole of the East Midlands, and through Lynn and Ely they had access to the sea. Much wealth accumulated in the town, and the eleven surviving medieval parish churches and at least one handsome stone house remain as evidence of this. There were food markets before 1066, and during the twelfth century the nuns of St Radegund were allowed to set up a fair on their own land at Garlic Lane; the canons of Barnwell had a fair in June (later Midsummer Fair), and the leper hospital was granted the right to hold a fair which developed into the well-known and long-lasting Stourbridge Fair. By 1200, Cambridge was a thriving commercial community which was also a county town and had at least one school of some distinction. Then, in 1209, scholars taking refuge from hostile townsmen in Oxford migrated to Cambridge and settled there. They were numerous enough by 1226 to have set up an organisation, represented by an official called a Chancellor, and seem to have arranged regular courses of study, taught by their own members. King Henry III took them under his protection as early as 1231 and arranged for them to be sheltered from exploitation by their landlords. At the same time he tried to ensure that they had a monopoly of teaching, by an order that only those enrolled under the tuition of a recognised master were to be allowed to remain in the town. The Medieval University The students who flocked to Cambridge soon arranged their scheme of study after the pattern which had become common in Italy and France, and which they would have known in Oxford. They studied first what would now be termed a 'foundation course' in arts - grammar, logic and rhetoric - followed later by arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, leading to the degrees of bachelor and master. There were no professors; the teaching was conducted by masters who had themselves passed through the course and who had been approved or licensed by the whole body of their colleagues (the universitas or university). The teaching took the form of reading and explaining texts; the examinations were oral disputations in which the candidates advanced a series of questions or theses which they disputed or argued with opponents a little senior to themselves, and finally with the masters who had taught them. Some of the masters, but by no means all, went on to advanced studies in divinity, canon and civil law, and, more rarely, medicine, which were taught and examined in the same way by those who had already passed through the course and become doctors. The doctors grouped themselves into specific faculties. It soon became necessary, to avoid abuse of the royal privileges conferred on scholars, to identify and authenticate the persons to whom degrees had been granted. Enrolment with a licensed master was the first step towards this; it was called matriculation because of the condition that the scholar's name must be on the master's matricula or roll, but later the University itself assumed this duty. It was also desirable to mark the stage in a scholar's progress by a ceremony of admission (graduation) to the different grades, or degrees, of membership. These were conferred by the whole body of masters, with the Chancellor exercising the power on their behalf, as his deputy, the Vice-Chancellor, came to do later. The grades of scholar became differentiated by a series of variations on the gown, hood and cap. Reminders of these terms and practices survive today. The Regent Masters, who were the teaching body, soon found that in addition to a ceremonial head they needed other representatives to speak and act for them. The first of these were the two Proctors (literally representatives) whom they elected annually to negotiate on their behalf with the town and other lay authorities, to keep the accounts, to safeguard their treasures and books, to moderate in examinations, and to supervise all other ceremonies. These duties were soon to be shared by other elected officers: Bedells, at first attached to the faculties, presided over ceremonies; and a Chaplain took charge of treasures and books. By the sixteenth century a Registrary recorded matriculations, admissions to degrees, and decisions of the regent masters, while an Orator wrote ceremonial letters and addresses. Most of these offices remain today, although in some cases for ceremonial purposes only. A community of such complexity needed rules. To this end, as problems arose, Statutes were adopted by the whole body of the University. These were not at first arranged or codified, but were noted haphazardly in books kept by the Proctors. The earliest known version of these decisions is a copy made in the mid-thirteenth century, which is now in the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome. Moves to Independence Most of the scholars of the University were at first clerks or clergymen,in holy orders of some sort, and expecting careers in the Church or in the Civil Service (as diplomats, judges or officers of the royal household). To support them during their years of study, they looked for preferment in the Church (a benefice, a canonry, even a dignity in a cathedral), but as ordained clerks they were at first subject to the local ecclesiastical authorities, that is, the Archdeacon and the Bishop of Ely. Before the end of the fifteenth century, however, they had freed themselves from this, and were independent of all ecclesiastical authority except the Pope's. The Chancellor became an ecclesiastical judge in his own right, hearing all cases involving the morals or discipline of scholars, and proving the wills of all who died in residence. At about the same period, the Chancellor also provided scholars with a secular court to which they could resort for the trial of all civil and criminal cases except those concerning major crimes. The Crown added to the University's independence. It introduced measures to protect scholars against exploitation by townsmen who had acquired market and toll rights which enabled them to raise the prices of food, fuel and candles. To counter this, the University was granted the right to proceed at law against market profiteers, and to enforce the conduct of assizes, or tests, of bread and ale by the town. The acquisition of these powers continued to be a source of friction between town and gown until the nineteenth century. More immediately, it is thought that the attacks on University property in the town in 1381 were partly inspired by resentment of this interference. If this is so, the attack was ill judged, since as a result of a Royal inquiry into the disturbances, the University was granted a jurisdiction which allowed the Chancellor not only to prosecute the profiteers, but also those falsifying weights and measures, endangering public health by the adulteration of food and drink, interrupting the supplies of fresh water, or wilfully introducing infection during epidemics of 'plague'. At the same time, further control of traders was allowed to the Chancellor with the grant of jurisdiction over law suits arising during markets and fairs. The last vestiges of these rights did not disappear until the nineteenth century, and the University retains even today certain responsibilities in connection with policing and licensing. The Physical Setting of the University In its earliest days, the University had no premises of its own: it relied on parish churches, especially Great St Mary's and St Benedict's (or 'Bene't's') and on the premises of the religious orders, as sites for its public ceremonies. Lectures, disputations and lodgings were found in private houses which frequently changed hands or went out of use. Soon a few groups of regent masters, lawyers and theologians, began to build or hire larger premises for teaching and lodging: these were the hostels, a few of which persisted until the sixteenth century when they were often acquired as part of the premises of Colleges. Unlike the Colleges, hostels had few endowments and were always privately owned. Meanwhile during the late fourteenth century and after, the University began to acquire property on the site today known as Senate-House Hill, and to build on it a group of buildings called the 'Schools' - some of which survive today as the 'Old' Schools. Here were the teaching rooms of the higher faculties, where lectures and disputations were held, the chapel, the library, and the treasury, with its chests and muniments. Most of the land and buildings in the town was still in private hands, or in those of religious houses, although from the late thirteenth century much was already passing to the new institutions called Colleges. These were founded by pious donors to provide in the first place for a small number of advanced students in law or divinity who would pray for the souls of their benefactors. It was later that the Colleges housed the very young undergraduates who had previously been lodged in hostels or private houses. The earliest College was St Peter's or 'Peterhouse', founded in 1284 by Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely. King's Hall, 1317, was intended by its founder, Edward II, to provide recruits to the higher civil service. Michaelhouse, Clare, Pembroke, Gonville Hall, Trinity Hall, Corpus Christi, King's, Queens' and St Catharine's followed in the next century. Three late foundations, Jesus, Christ's and St John's, emerged from the dissolution of small religious houses before 1520 and, like the King's Hall, provided for younger scholars as well as 'post-graduates'. Before the middle of the sixteenth century, the Colleges began to play a decisive part in University life. They now nominated the Proctors from among their own members for the annual term of office, and their heads often served with the Vice-Chancellor and senior doctors as members of an advisory council which was soon to be called the Caput Senatus. From the sixteenth century until almost the end of the twentieth, the office of Vice-Chancellor was always held by the Head of one of the Colleges. One of the key figures in Cambridge at this time was John Fisher, who was successively Master of Michaelhouse, Proctor, Vice-Chancellor, Chancellor (1509-35) and President of Queens'. As adviser to King Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, he was instrumental in the foundation of Christ's and St John's; equally importantly he evidently inspired the establishment of the first endowed university teaching post, the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity. He also attracted to Cambridge a number of scholars - notably Erasmus of Rotterdam - who encouraged the 'new learning' in Greek and Hebrew, helping to clear the way for the half-theological, half-philosophical speculations which produced the reformation of the church and the dissolution of the monasteries. The 'New' University of the Sixteenth Century The effect of the early academic and religious changes of the century can be seen in the physical appearance of the town: a great new College, Trinity, was founded by Henry VIII from the two small houses of King's Hall and Michaelhouse; Dr Caius enlarged Gonville Hall to make it almost a new foundation, called Gonville and Caius College, which occupied a large site close to the Old Schools; Emmanuel absorbed the Dominican site, Sidney Sussex that of the Franciscans, and Magdalene absorbed the former Benedictine house of studies known as Buckingham College. These new foundations were concerned with the education of men for the priesthood in the national church, but they, and Trinity especially, attracted for the first time large numbers of lay students. The size of the official University greatly increased, but the total population of young men in the town included those who came to Cambridge, not so much with the intention of eventual graduation, but to profit from unofficial contacts and extra-curricular activities, and who then went on for a year or so to an Inn of Court in London. These lay students, their servants, and the tailors, fencing-masters, tennis-court-keepers, riding-masters and the like, who came to profit from them, put very great pressure on living accommodation and food-supplies in the town and created serious problems of public order. This was a period when town-gown relationships were very severely strained. The changing character of the student body is reflected in the curriculum. Henry VIII had issued a series of injunctions to the University in 1536 suppressing the Faculty of Canon Law and forbidding the study of scholastic philosophy. The study of canon law declined, and the Greek and Latin classics, mathematics and Biblical studies now came to the fore. The changes in the University were perpetuated by successive Royal interventions; the monarchs were concerned with the universities as producers of the future leaders of the reformed church, and the Statutes of 1570 ensured this. They concentrated authority not, as previously, in the Regent Masters and the Proctors, but in the Vice-Chancellor and the Heads. The endowment by Henry VIII of five professorships, the Regius professorships of divinity, Hebrew, Greek, physic and civil law, emphasised changes in teaching methods and set an example for private donors. The national upheavals of 1640 to 1660, and to a lesser degree of 1688-89, led to disturbances in appointments and discipline, but Royal influence in the shape of Privy Council orders, and of requests for degrees for the court's nominees (mandate degrees) continued until the early eighteenth century. The Georgian/Hanoverian University Printing had been undertaken in Cambridge in the 1520s and a Royal charter in 1534 gave to the University the power to name (that is, to license) three printers (stationers) who were to print and publish works which it approved. Another fifty years were to pass before this privilege was regularly exercised. From 1584, regular publication began under the University's privilege and continued more or less steadily but did not achieve real force until Richard Bentley's reorganisation in the last decade of the seventeenth century provided new premises and types. These improvements allowed the Press in due course to exploit more fully the monopoly of Bible printing which it shared with Oxford and the 'King's Printers', and to produce a steady stream of works essential to the development of its studies. The Cambridge University Press continues to this day as one of the oldest and largest academic publishers in the world. The mathematical work of the seventeenth century had developed its full flower in the career of Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), who with his followers pursued scientific investigations of all sorts. This is reflected in the rapid establishment by the University and by private donors of a series of professorships f