Oxford

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in... size only to the British Library. Known to Oxford scholars as "Bodley" or simply "the Bod", under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom and under Irish Law it is entitled to request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland. Though University members may borrow some books from dependent libraries , the Bodleian operates principally as a reference library and in general documents may not be removed from the reading rooms. The Library occupies a group of five buildings near Broad Street: these range in date from the late medieval Duke Humfrey's Library to the New Bodleian of the 1930s. Since the 19th century a number of underground stores have been built below parts of these.
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The Headington Shark is a sculpture situated at 2 New High Street, Headington, Oxford, England, depicting a shark embedded head-first in the roof of... the house. The shark first appeared on 9 August 1986. Bill Heine, a local radio presenter who still owns the house, has said "The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki". The sculpture, which is reported to weigh 4 long hundredweights and is 25 feet long, and is made of painted fibreglass, is named Untitled 1986 . The sculpture was erected on the 41st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. For the occasion of the shark's 21st anniversary in August 2007, it was renovated by the sculptor, following earlier complaints about the condition of the sculpture and the house. Created by sculptor John Buckley, the shark was controversial when it first appeared.
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Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Modern... Art Oxford's premises at 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford were designed by the architect Harry Drinkwater and built in 1892 as a square room and stores for Hanley's City Brewery. The gallery was founded by architect Trevor Green. With funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain, the gallery survived as a venue for temporary exhibitions. It was widely known as MoMA Oxford, similar to other international modern art spaces such as MoMA in New York. Several transitory directors oversaw the gallery until Nicholas Serota became director in 1974, with Sandy Nairne as assistant director. David Elliott replaced Serota in 1976. Elliott's programme focused on media that were often ignored by bigger public galleries at the time, such as photography, architecture and graphic design.
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Christ Church Cathedral is the cathedral of the diocese of Oxford, which consists of the counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. It... is also, uniquely, the chapel of Christ Church, a college of the University of Oxford. The cathedral was originally the church of St Frideswide's Priory. The site is claimed to be the location of the abbey and relics of St Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford, although this is debatable. In 1522, the priory was surrendered to Cardinal Wolsey, who had selected it as the site for his proposed college. However, in 1529 the foundation was taken over by King Henry VIII. Work stopped, but in June 1532 the college was refounded by the King. In 1546, Henry VIII transferred to it from Osney to the see of Oxford. The cathedral has the name of Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxoniensis, given to it by King Henry VIII's foundation charter. There has been a choir at the cathedral since 1526, when John Taverner was the organist and also master of the choristers. The statutes of Cardinal Wolsey's original college, initially called Cardinal College, mentioned sixteen choristers and thirty singing priests.
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Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow... of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms. Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker.
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Fernando Alonso Díaz is a Spanish Formula One racing driver and a two-time World Champion, who is currently racing for Ferrari. On 25 September... 2005, he won the Formula One World Driver's Championship title at the age of 24 years and 58 days, at the time making him the youngest Formula One World Drivers' Champion. After retaining the title the following year, Alonso also became the youngest double Champion at the time. Nicknamed El Nano, a typical pseudonym for Fernando in Asturias, his place of birth, Alonso acts as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. Fernando Alonso was born in Oviedo, Asturias in northern Spain. His mother worked in a department store and his father was employed as a mechanic in an explosives factory near Oviedo. Alonso has an older sister, Lorena. Alonso's father José Luis, an amateur kart racer, wanted to pass on his passion to his children. He built a kart, originally meant for eight-year-old Lorena, but unlike her three-year-old brother, she showed no interest in the sport. Alonso married Raquel del Rosario, lead singer of Spanish pop band El Sueño de Morfeo, on 17 November 2006.
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Sir Kenneth James Dover, FRSE, FBA was a distinguished British Classical scholar and academic, who was head of an Oxford college and from 1981 until... his retirement in December 2005 was Chancellor of the University of St Andrews. He was the author of Greek Homosexuality, a key text on the subject. Kenneth Dover was born in London, the only child of Percy Dover and Dorothy Healey. He was educated at St Paul's School and Balliol College, Oxford. He served with the Royal Artillery during the Second World War and was mentioned in dispatches for his service in Italy. After military service, Dover returned to Oxford and became Fellow and tutor at his old college in 1948. In 1955, Dover was appointed Professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews, and was twice Dean of the university's Faculty of Arts during his twenty-one years there. He was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1975. Dover received a knighthood two years later for services to Greek scholarship. In 1976, Dover became President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a post he held for ten years.
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Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL , commonly known as P. D. James, is an English crime writer and... Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, most famous for a series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh. James was born in Oxford, the daughter of Sidney James, a tax inspector, and educated at the British School in Ludlow and Cambridge High School for Girls. James had to leave school at age sixteen to work: her family did not have much money and her father did not believe in higher education for girls. James worked in a tax office for three years, and later found a job as an assistant stage manager for a theatre group. In 1941, she married Ernest Connor Bantry White, an army doctor, and had two daughters, Claire and Jane. When White returned from World War II, he suffered from illness and James was forced to provide for the whole family until her husband's death in 1964. She studied hospital administration , and from 1949 to 1968, worked for a hospital board in London, England. James began writing in the mid-1950s.
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Timothy Henry "Tim" Henman OBE is a retired English professional tennis player and former British Number One. Henman played a serve-and-volley style... of tennis that suited the grass courts of Wimbledon. He was the first player from the United Kingdom since Roger Taylor in the 1970s to reach the semi-finals of the Wimbledon Men's Singles Championship. Henman never reached the finals of any Grand Slam but having reached six Grand Slam semi-finals, won 15 career ATP titles , and been ranked number 4 in the world, Henman was one of Britain's most successful open era male tennis players. He retired after helping Great Britain defeat Croatia in a Davis Cup match played in September 2007. Nicknamed "Tiger Tim", Henman is worth £17 million and remains a celebrity among the public. Tim Henman comes from a talented sporting family: his father Tony, a solicitor, was accomplished at various sports, including tennis and squash. His mother Jane, a dress designer, played Junior Wimbledon and introduced Tim and his older brothers Michael and Richard to tennis as soon as they could walk on the family's grass tennis court.
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Orlando Gibbons was an English composer, virginalist and organist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods. He was a leading composer in the... England of his day. Gibbons was born in Cambridge and christened at Oxford the same year – thus appearing in Oxford church records. Between 1596 and 1598 he sang in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, where his brother Edward Gibbons , eldest of the four sons of William Gibbons, was master of the choristers. The second brother Ellis Gibbons was also a promising composer, but died young. Orlando entered the university in 1598 and achieved the degree of Bachelor of Music in 1606. James I appointed him a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he served as an organist from at least 1615 until his death. In 1623 he became senior organist at the Chapel Royal, with Thomas Tomkins as junior organist. He also held positions as keyboard player in the privy chamber of the court of Prince Charles , and organist at Westminster Abbey. He died at age 41 in Canterbury of apoplexy, and a monument to him was built in Canterbury Cathedral.
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Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Beyond his... primary roles as the band's lead guitarist and keyboardist, Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist and also plays viola, harmonica, glockenspiel, ondes Martenot, banjo and drums, and works with computer-generated sounds and sampling. Greenwood is also a computer programmer and writes music software used by Radiohead. Beyond his work with Radiohead, Greenwood wrote the soundtracks of the films Bodysong, There Will Be Blood, Norwegian Wood and We Need To Talk About Kevin, as well as serving as composer-in-residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra. He is the younger brother of fellow Radiohead member, Colin Greenwood. Noted for his aggressive playing style, Greenwood is consistently named as one of the greatest guitarists of the modern era. Channel 4 described Greenwood as a "significant creative force within the music industry." He has also ranked #48 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," while Spin ranked him #29 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
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Edward John O'Brien is an English musician, songwriter, and guitarist for the rock band Radiohead. He is also responsible for harmony vocals during... live concerts and on many tracks from the band's albums . In addition, he has played guitar and provided backing vocals for the 7 Worlds Collide project. Citing his work with Radiohead, various lists and polls have ranked Ed O'Brien as one of the greatest guitarists in the modern era. O'Brien uses a large collection of effects pedals, to create Radiohead's distinct sound. Even on tracks that do not feature any guitar work, his pedals are put to use for other purposes, such as altering Thom Yorke's keyboard playing .
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Colin Charles Greenwood , is an English musician and composer best known as the bassist of the rock band Radiohead. Apart from bass, Colin plays... keyboards and synthesizers and works on sampling on the electronic side of Radiohead. He is the older brother of fellow band member, Jonny Greenwood. Greenwood, whose father served in the Army, lived in Germany as a child for enough time to become fluent in the language. The family historically had ties to both the British Communist Party and the Fabian Society. He has credited his older sister, Susan, with greatly influencing his taste in music as an adolescent. Said Greenwood, "She’s responsible for our precocious love of miserable music. The Fall, Magazine, Joy Division. We were ostracized at school because everyone else was into Iron Maiden.” When Greenwood was 12 years old, he met future band mate Thom Yorke at Abingdon School, an independent school for boys. Future band mates Ed O'Brien, who Greenwood met during a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury", and Phil Selway also attended the school.
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