Two Shades of Blue (ePub)

At a time when the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are again under sustained attack from activists and politicians, Two Shades of Blue takes the reader in two volumes from their founding in the early Thirteenth Century up to the reforms and advances of the modern era. Two Shades of Blue - a reference to the sporting colours of dark blue for Oxford and light blue for Cambridge - paints a brilliant picture of both Universities evolving from their monastic roots into secular institutions in which class and wealth were paramount in determining the status of every student. Indeed, England's supreme halls of learning were symbols of white male privilege until the Nineteenth Century. The first volume examines how University life developed despite religious conflict, political upheaval and the enmities that developed between 'the town' and 'the gown' at both locations. It exposes the impact on the colleges of the Renaissance and the Reformation of Henry VIII, and it studies the bloody consequences of the schism between Catholics and Protestants during the reigns of his children, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, ending in the Stuart coup of 1603 that brought the Scottish King, James I, to the English throne. It explores the rise of the Puritans at both Universities and the Civil Wars of Charles I that tore them apart, leading to the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. It covers the events following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, including the Scientific Revolution under Isaac Newton and culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that deposed James II and handed the crown to William of Orange and Mary II. Volume I ends in 1714 with the death of Mary's sister, Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, and the arrival of King George, the first of the Hanoverians. Two Shades of Blue will appeal to the general reader in many parts of the globe, as well as academics and students.

Award-winning author Peter Alexander Thompson, a London-based former Fleet Street editor, has written twenty-one books on war, royalty and big business. His titles include Maxwell: A Portrait of Power, the first biography to expose the criminality of the media magnate Robert Maxwell, and Cudlipp's Circus, a memoir which reveals how the author collaborated with the BBC's Panorama team to make 'The Max Factor', the TV documentary that precipitated Maxwell's dramatic fall. Thompson won the Blake Dawson Prize for Business Literature, with co-author Robert Macklin, for The Big Fella: The Rise and Rise of BHP Billiton. Other works are The Private Lives of Mayfair, an historic account of Mayfair personalities over 350 years; Pacific Fury, a best-selling one-volume history of the Pacific War; The Battle for Singapore 1942 and The Quest for Freedom, a biography of Alexander Kerensky and the Russian Revolution. His new book, Two Shades of Blue, is the first of two volumes that will cover the histories of Oxford and Cambridge Universities from their founding in the Thirteenth Century up to the reforms and advances of the modern era.