ABSTRACT
I was fortunate in choosing University College London (UCL), an exciting and rejuvenated department in an exciting rejuvenated city. UCL was founded in the early years of the 19th century by a group of freethinking intellectuals, notably including the utilitarian philosophers John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham who kindly bequeathed his skeleton to the college. He sits there to this day clad in his best suit, with his gloved hands poised over his walking stick with a high crowned hat above the wax mask of his face. The purpose of UCL’s foundation was to break the tight link between the only other English universities, Oxford and Cambridge, and the Church of England. This did not go without opposition; with no chapel and no theology department, it was deemed “the godless house in Gower Street” and led in due course to the creation of a rival institution, Kings College London located in The Strand, with close links to the Anglican Church.
