ABSTRACT
I In his admirable brief history of University College, Nottingham, Professor A.C.Wood provided far more illuminating glimpses of the trials and tribulations of late-nineteenth-century British academic life than are usually to be found in works of this genre. This partly reflects the circumstances of the case, for the relationships between town, gown, and administration were unique, and ‘indifference, political prejudice, class consciousness and misguided suspicion’ played an unusually prominent role in the institution’s early years.1 But in addition, full credit must be accorded to the author, who successfully ‘humanized’ his narrative by emphasizing personalities rather than the tedious factual details which so often overburden official histories, and to the university authorities, who wisely refrained from censoring the record of their predecessors’ indiscretions.
