THE OTHER PLACE
'What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford, broadly speaking, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels compelled to write about it.'
A.A. Milne

The portmanteau term 'Oxbridge' may seem to imply a certain parity but the fact that the equally plausible 'Camford' has never caught on does suggest a degree of disparity. The Dictionary of National Biography's selection of Brief Lives includes a hundred and fifty significant Britons of the twentieth century. Of these thirty-four were graduates of Oxford, against twenty-one from Cambridge; though perhaps more to the point is the fact that almost a hundred of the entrants went to neither. In 2001 the BBC asked the British public to vote for its Greatest Briton. Narrowing the nominations down to a final thirty yielded three from Cambridge — Sir Isaac Newton, Alan Turing and William Wilberforce — as against two from Oxford — Margaret Thatcher and Sir Christopher Wren. Of the rest Sir Alexander Fleming went to medical school, John Logie Baird had his course at Glasgow cut short by the war and only birth-control pioneer Marie Stopes actually graduated from a conventional university course. But, insofar as there is an 'Oxbridge conspiracy' to stitch up British public life, it is Oxford which is disproportionately guilty. An Oxford don, asked why this should be so, offered the opinion that Oxford had always seen itself as a preparation for public life, whereas at Cambridge 'they've always been more interested in ... (long, thoughtful pause) ... always been more interested in ... truth.'

accommodation oxford