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139-451: Stella Dorothea Gibbons (5 January 1902 – 19 December 1989) was an English author, journalist, and poet. She established her reputation with her first novel , Cold Comfort Farm (1932) which has been reprinted many times. Although she was active as a writer for half a century, none of her later 22 novels or other literary works—which included a sequel to Cold Comfort Farm —achieved the same critical or popular success. Much of her work

278-519: A Lady article as "one of the most exquisite" of woman artists. After the war, Allan Webb resumed his stage career with the role of Count Almaviva in the 1946 Sadler's Wells production of The Marriage of Figaro . In 1947 he appeared in the original run of the Vivian Ellis musical Bless the Bride , and made several further stage appearances in the following two years. During this time he had

417-433: A Strategy for Sustainable UCL 2019–24 , including three initiatives to promote sustainability. The Positive Climate initiative saw UCL pledge to have a 40% reduction in energy usage, all energy to come from renewables, and all UCL buildings to be carbon neutral by 2024, along with achieving net zero carbon emissions for UCL by 2030. The Positive Climate initiative was the winner in the "2030 Climate Action" category at

556-581: A commonplace book in which she was recording her thoughts and opinions on literature as late as 1988. From the mid-1980s Gibbons experienced recurrent health problems, not helped when she resumed smoking. In her last months she was looked after at home by her grandson and his girlfriend. She died there on 19 December 1989, after collapsing the previous day, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery , alongside her husband. At her funeral, her nephew and future biographer Reggie Oliver read two of her poems,

695-470: A literary canon. Because she was a woman who wrote amusingly, she was classified as "middlebrow"; furthermore, she was published by Longmans, a non-literary publisher. Her lampooning of the literary establishment in the spoof dedication of Cold Comfort Farm to one "Anthony Pookworthy" did not amuse that establishment, who were further offended by the book's mockery of the writing of such canonical figures as Lawrence and Hardy—hence Virginia Woolf's reaction to

834-500: A Sorcerer (1955). From 1954, having accepted an invitation from Malcolm Muggeridge , the editor of Punch , Gibbons provided frequent contributions to the magazine for the following 15 years. Among these was a science fiction story, "Jane in Space", written in the style of Jane Austen . Gibbons, who wrote the introduction to the 1957 Heritage edition of Sense and Sensibility , was a long-time admirer of Austen, and had described her in

973-506: A Sustainable UCL was a finalist in the "Sustainable Institution of the Year" category at the 2022 Green Gown Awards. The two main bodies in UCL's governance structure are the council and the academic board , both of which are established by the royal charter and with powers defined by the statutes. There is also a University Management Committee, which is the executive committee responsible for

1112-598: A brief affair with the actress Sydney Malcolm, for which Gibbons quickly forgave him. He left the theatre in 1949 to become a director of a book club specialising in special editions, and later bought a bookshop in the Archway district of London. His health failed in the late 1950s and in 1958 he was diagnosed with cancer of the liver. He died in July 1959 at Oakshott Avenue. After Webb's death, Gibbons remained at Oakshott Avenue and continued to write novels. From 1961 she rented

1251-637: A court case to regain control of part of its campus which had been occupied by pro-Gaza protesters since May. UCL has a second campus, UCL East , at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. The first building, with three floors of teaching and research space as well as accommodation for 500 students in two towers, opened in 2022, and the second, with eight floors of teaching and research space, opened in 2023. A further four buildings are planned for construction in

1390-569: A critical summary of Gibbons's poems, Loralee MacPike has described them as "slight lyrics ... [which] tend toward classic, even archaic, diction, and only occasionally ... show flashes of the novels' wit". Such lines as "my thoughts, like purple parrots / Brood / In the sick light" come dangerously close indeed to the overblown rhetoric she satirized in Cold Comfort Farm : "How like yaks were your drowsy thoughts". The immediate and enduring success of Cold Comfort Farm dominated

1529-403: A different course, attended some of the same lectures. The two shared a love of literature and a taste for subversive humour. Graves lived until 1999, and recalled in an interview late in life that many of the jokes they shared found their way into Cold Comfort Farm , as did some of their common acquaintances. Soon after Gibbons began the course she contributed a poem, "The Marshes of My Soul", to

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1668-650: A dour satisfaction out of managing the rations, salvaging, fire watching, and feeling that I am trying to work for a better world". In July 1940 her husband Allan Webb enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment , and the following year was commissioned into the King's Royal Rifle Corps . He later served overseas, mostly in Cairo . The title story in Gibbons's 1940 collection, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm , failed to equal

1807-558: A favourable review in The Times Literary Supplement . Oliver surmises that "the middle of the Second World War was perhaps the wrong time to satirise ... the ridiculous and dangerous rituals that surround the male aggressive instinct". The Bachelor won critical praise for its revealing account of life in war-torn Britain—as did several of Gibbons's postwar novels. Gibbons's first postwar novel

1946-514: A literary magazine edited by T. S. Eliot . This work was read and admired by Virginia Woolf , who enquired if Gibbons would write poems for the Woolf publishing house, the Hogarth Press . In January 1928 J. C. Squire , a leading voice in the "Georgian" poetry movement, began to publish Gibbons's poems in his magazine, The London Mercury . Squire also persuaded Longmans to publish

2085-446: A motion was passed that ended segregation by sex at UCL. This was achieved by Brian Woledge (Fielden Professor of French at UCL from 1939 to 1971) and David Colquhoun , at that time a young lecturer in pharmacology. In 1976, a new charter restored UCL's legal independence, although still without the power to award its own degrees. Under this charter the college became formally known as University College London . This name abandoned

2224-626: A naturalised German employed by his family's cosmetics firm. The couple became engaged, and enjoyed regular weekends together, signing hotel registers as a married couple using false names. In May 1926 Gibbons's mother, Maude, died suddenly at the age of 48. With little reason to remain with her father in the Kentish Town surgery, Gibbons took lodgings in Willow Road, near Hampstead Heath . Five months later, on 15 October, her father died from heart disease aggravated by heavy drinking. Gibbons

2363-645: A new Engineering and Architectural Design MEng , started in September 2018. One Pool Street, the first building on the UCL East campus, opened in November 2022. UCL East was officially opened, along with the Marshgate building that completed phase 1 of the development, in September 2023 by Olympic gold medalist and UCL alumna Christine Ohuruogu . UCL continued to grow through mergers with smaller colleges in

2502-584: A new corporate branding under which the name University College London was replaced by the initialism UCL in all external communications. UCL established the UCL School of Energy & Resources (later UCL Australia ) in Adelaide , Australia, in 2008 as the first campus of a British university in the country. The school was based in the historic Torrens Building in Victoria Square. In 2011,

2641-423: A parody was the work of a scarcely known woman writer, and speculated that "Stella Gibbons" was a pen-name for Evelyn Waugh . Gibbons suddenly found herself in demand in literary circles and from fellow writers, raised to a celebrity status that she found distasteful. She acquired an agent, who advised her that she could confidently expect a regular and comfortable income as a novelist. This assurance prompted her, at

2780-631: A poet rather than a novelist. After Cold Comfort Farm , a satire on the genre of rural-themed "loam and lovechild" novels popular in the late 1920s, most of Gibbons's novels were based within the middle-class suburban world with which she was familiar. Gibbons became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. Her style has been praised by critics for its charm, barbed humour and descriptive skill, and has led to comparison with Jane Austen . The impact of Cold Comfort Farm dominated her career, and she grew to resent her identification with

2919-690: A repetition of the earlier masterpiece. Enbury Heath (1935) is a relatively faithful account of her childhood and early adult life with, according to Oliver, "only the thinnest veil of fictional gauze cover[ing] raw experience". Miss Linsey and Pa (1936) was thought by Nicola Beauman, in her analysis of women writers from 1914 to 1939, to parody Radclyffe Hall 's 1928 lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness . Gibbons's final prewar novels were Nightingale Wood (1935)—"Cinderella brought right up to date"—and My American (1939), which Oliver considers her most escapist novel, "a variant of Hans Christian Andersen 's The Snow Queen ." Gibbons always considered herself

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3058-538: A reputation as a caustic book reviewer, and was particularly critical of the then fashionable "loam and lovechild" rural novels. Novelists such as Mary Webb and Sheila Kaye-Smith had achieved considerable popularity through their depictions of country life; Webb was a favourite of the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin . Gibbons had first become familiar with the genre when she provided summaries of Webb's The Golden Arrow for

3197-469: A reputation than from first-time writers. For this reason, literary communities have created awards that help acknowledge exceptional debut novels. In contemporary British and American publishing markets, most authors receive only a small monetary advance before publication of their debut novel; in the rare exceptions when a large print run and high volume of sales are anticipated, the advance can be larger. For an example of an unusually high advance: in 2013,

3336-420: A role similar to the senate in other institutions. It is the senior academic body responsible for advising council on academic matters and also elects academic members to council. It is, however, a much larger body than the senates at many other universities, including all professors as well as elected representatives of other academic and non-academic staff. UCL's principal academic and administrative officer

3475-516: A serious poet rather than a comic writer. She published two collections of poetry in the 1930s, the latter of which, The Lowland Verses (1938) contains "The Marriage of the Machine", an early lament on the effects of industrial pollution: "What oil, what poison lulls/Your wings and webs, my cormorants and gulls?" Gibbons's single children's book was the fairy tale collection The Untidy Gnome , published in 1935 and dedicated to her only child Laura, who

3614-476: A stockbroker. The couple bought a house in Malden Crescent, Kentish Town , a working-class district of North London, where Telford established the medical practice in which he continued for the remainder of his life. Stella, the couple's first child, was born on 5 January 1902; two brothers, Gerald and Lewis, followed in 1905 and 1909 respectively. The atmosphere in the Kentish Town house echoed that of

3753-508: A summer house at Trevone in Cornwall, which became the setting for her 1962 novel The Weather at Tregulla . She returned to literary criticism after many years, when in 1965 she contributed an essay to Light on C.S. Lewis , a review of that writer 's work edited by Jocelyn Gibb. In 1966 she wrote an essay for Punch , "Genesis of a Novel", in which she mused on the detrimental effect of Cold Comfort Farm on her long-term career. She likened

3892-456: A university, and who make a firm acceptance of a place and apply for accommodation by 10 June each year, and to single overseas first-year postgraduates at UCL who have not previously lived in London while studying at a university, and who make a firm acceptance of a place and apply for accommodation by 30 June each year. Accommodation is also guaranteed for students who are under 18 at the start of

4031-881: A £500 million investment in its main Bloomsbury campus over 10 years, as well as the establishment of a new campus, UCL East , next to the Olympic Park in Stratford in the East End of London. In 2018, UCL opened UCL at Here East , at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, offering courses jointly between the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment and the Faculty of Engineering Sciences . The first undergraduate students, on

4170-486: Is commonly regarded as the "spiritual father" of UCL, as his ideas on education and society were influential with the institution's founders, particularly James Mill (1773–1836) and Henry Brougham (1778–1868). In 1828, the chair of political economy at London University was created, with John Ramsay McCulloch as the first incumbent. In 1829, the university appointed the first professor of English in England, although

4309-408: Is happy or not but which, I dare to say, is very unsatisfactory to those who love Marianne ... If I have not spoken of Colonel Brandon it is because I do not care to." From Gibbons's "Introduction" to a 1957 reissue of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility . In 1950 Gibbons published her Collected Poems , and in the same year was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature . Throughout

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4448-767: Is on levels 38 and 50 (penthouse) of One Canada Square in the financial district of Canary Wharf . The UCL Observatory is in Mill Hill and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory is based in Holmbury St Mary , Surrey. The UCL Athletics Ground is in Shenley, Hertfordshire. UCL owns 26 halls of residence with around 7,000 student beds. The university guarantees accommodation to single full-time first-year undergraduate students who have not previously lived in London while studying at

4587-569: Is organised into 11 constituent faculties , within which there are over 100 departments, institutes and research centres. UCL operates several museums and collections in a wide range of fields, including the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy , and administers the annual Orwell Prize in political writing. In 2022/23, UCL had a total income of £1.93 billion, of which £527 million

4726-558: Is the President and Provost, who is also UCL's designated accountable officer for reporting to the Office for Students on behalf of UCL. The provost is appointed by Council after consultation with the academic board, and is ex officio a member of council and chair of the academic board. Michael Spence has been president and provost since January 2021, when he succeeded Michael Arthur . Vice-provosts are appointed by council on

4865-464: Is upon her again ... 'Tes the hand of Nature and we women cannot escape it." Cold Comfort Farm , chapter V. Judith Starkadder explains the mysterious properties of "sukebind". Gibbons's chosen title for her novel had been "Curse God Farm", before her friend Elizabeth Coxhead, who had connections in the Hinckley district of Leicestershire , suggested "Cold Comfort" as an alternative, using

5004-627: The Oxford English Dictionary , the earliest attested usage of "first novel" is from 1876. However, the term is much older, with instances going back to at least 1800. The Oxford English Dictionary does not have an entry for "debut novel". The earliest usage of "debut novel" in the Google Books database is 1930 (as of 2011 ). The term appears in newspapers as early as 1922, in a review of Marjorie L.C. Pickthall 's novel The Bridge . The Google Books Ngram Viewer shows

5143-627: The ARPANET , later becoming part of SATNET . UCL's interconnection between the ARPANET and early British academic networks was the first international heterogeneous resource sharing network. UCL played a significant role in the very earliest experimental Internet work and adopted TCP/IP in 1982, ahead of the ARPANET. The college's senior common room , the Housman Room, remained men-only until 1969. After two unsuccessful attempts,

5282-571: The BBC , and contributed three new poems to Richard Adams 's 1986 anthology Occasional Poets , a work which included verses from part-time poets such as Iris Murdoch , William Golding , Alan Ayckbourn and Quentin Crisp . These were Gibbons's last published works. One of Gibbons's poems in the anthology was "Writ in Water", inspired by her love for the poetry of Keats. In 2013 the manuscript of this poem

5421-735: The Eastman Dental Institute (in 1999), the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (in 1999), the School of Pharmacy (in 2012) and the Institute of Education (in 2014). UCL has its main campus in the Bloomsbury area of central London , with a number of institutes and teaching hospitals elsewhere in central London and has a second campus, UCL East , at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford , East London. UCL

5560-579: The Eastman Dental Institute . Proposals for a merger between UCL and Imperial College London were announced in 2002. The proposal provoked strong opposition from UCL teaching staff and students and the AUT union , which criticised "the indecent haste and lack of consultation", leading to its abandonment by UCL provost Sir Derek Roberts . UCL was granted its own taught and research degree awarding powers in 2005, and all UCL students registered from 2007/08 qualified with UCL degrees. The same year, UCL adopted

5699-488: The Evening Standard's 1928 serialisation. She found the writing overblown and the plotting ridiculous, and decided that her own first novel would be a comic parody of the genre. By February 1932 she had completed the manuscript and delivered it to her publishers, Longmans. "Every year, in the fulness o' summer, when the sukebind hangs heavy from the wains ... 'tes the same. And when the spring comes her hour

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5838-523: The First World War , but attracted several women, among them the future novelist Elizabeth Bowen . As well as English Literature, the curriculum covered economics, politics, history, science and languages; practical skills such as shorthand and typing were not included. After the stifling experience of school, Gibbons found university exhilarating and made numerous friendships, particularly with Ida Affleck Graves , an aspiring poet who, although on

5977-886: The London Borough of Camden , in Central London . The main campus is located around Gower Street , with many other departments close by in Bloomsbury. Many health institutes are located close to associated hospitals, including the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square , the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children , and

6116-539: The Prix Étranger winners from the inter-war years, only Cold Comfort Farm and Woolf's To the Lighthouse are remembered today, and that only the former has bequeathed a phrase that has passed into common usage: "something nasty in the woodshed". During the remainder of the 1930s Gibbons produced five more novels, as well as two poetry collections, a children's book, and a number of short stories. From November 1936

6255-593: The Prix Étranger award. Her belief in what she called "the gentle powers (Pity, Affection, Time, Beauty, Laughter)" also flew in the face of a disillusioned modernism . The literary critic John Carey suggests that the abandonment by intellectuals of "the clerks and the suburbs" as subjects of literary interest provided an opening for writers prepared to exploit this underexplored area. He considers John Betjeman and Stevie Smith as two writers who successfully achieved this. Hammill believes that Gibbons should be named alongside these two, since in her writings she rejects

6394-524: The Prix Étranger , the foreign novel category of the prestigious French literary prize, the Prix Femina . It had won against works by two more experienced writers, Bowen and Rosamond Lehmann . This outcome irritated Virginia Woolf, herself a former Prix Étranger winner, who wrote to Bowen: "I was enraged to see they gave the £40 (the cash value of the prize) to Gibbons; still, now you and Rosamond can join in blaming her". Cooke observes that of all

6533-633: The UCL Eastman Dental Institute and Eastman Dental Hospital . Historic UCL buildings in Bloomsbury include the grade I listed UCL Main Building , including the original Wilkins building designed by William Wilkins , and, directly opposite on Gower Street, the early 20th century grade II listed Cruciform Building, the last major building designed by Alfred Waterhouse . Nearby are the grade II listed Kathleen Lonsdale Building, UCL's first purpose-built chemistry laboratory, and

6672-574: The visitor , a position in English charity law that oversees the operation of the institution. That there shall be a visitor of the college is specified by the royal charter, as is that the position is to be held by the Master of the Rolls , the second most senior judge in England and Wales. UCL's council comprises 20 members, of whom 11 are members external to UCL; seven are UCL academic staff, including

6811-469: The 1930s, Juliet Gardiner ascribes a socio-economic dimension to the book: "a picture of rural gloom caused by government lassitude and urban indifference". The work was an immediate critical and popular success. The satire was heightened by Gibbons's mockery of purple prose , whereby she marked the most florid and overwritten passages of the book with asterisks, "for the reader's delectation and mirth". One critic found it hard to accept that so well-developed

6950-549: The 1950s she continued, at roughly two-year intervals, to produce politely received novels, none of which created any particular stir. Among these was Fort of the Bear (1953), in which she departed from her familiar London milieu by setting the story largely in the wilder regions of Canada. This was the last of her books handled by Longmans; thereafter her work was published by Hodder and Stoughton. A journey to Austria and Venice in 1953 provided material for her novel The Shadow of

7089-728: The 1990s, with the Institute of Child Health joining in 1995, the School of Podiatry in 1996 and the Institute of Neurology in 1997. In 1998, UCL merged with the Royal Free Hospital Medical School to create the Royal Free and University College Medical School (renamed the UCL Medical School in October 2008). In 1999, UCL merged with the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and

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7228-437: The 2017/18 academic year, a rise from four cases the year before. Following pressure from victims, and after physicist Emma Chapman won the legal right to speak freely about her abuse at the university, UCL announced in 2018 that it would abandon non-disclosure settlements in settlements. In 2020, UCL became the first Russell Group university to ban romantic and sexual relationships between lecturers and their students. It

7367-461: The 2020 Green Gown Awards. A second initiative, The Loop , promotes circular economy . UCL set a target of reducing waste per person by 20% between 2019 and 2024, while aiming for an 85% recycling rate and the elimination of single-use plastics on campus. The third initiative, Wild Bloomsbury , promotes biodiversity . UCL set a target of creating 10,000 m (1.0 ha; 2.5 acres) of biodiverse green space on campus by 2024. The Strategy for

7506-852: The 2030s. UCL also operates a campus within Here East , the former Olympic park media centre. Elsewhere in Central London are the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology adjacent to Moorfields Eye Hospital in Clerkenwell , the Royal Free Hospital and the Whittington Hospital campuses of the UCL Medical School, and a number of other associated teaching hospitals. The UCL School of Management

7645-528: The December 1921 issue of University College Magazine . This parody, in the newly fashionable vers libre style, was her first published literary work. During the next two years she contributed further poems and prose to the magazine, including "The Doer, a Story in the Russian Manner", which foreshadows her later novels in both theme and style. Gibbons completed her course in the summer of 1923, and

7784-547: The Philosopher's Stone , only receive small initial print runs. Debut novels that do well will be reprinted as sales increase due to word of mouth popularity of the novels—publishers do not often run large marketing campaigns for debut novelists. There are numerous literary prizes for debut novels often associated with genre or nationality. These prizes are in recognition of the difficulties faced by debut novelists and bring attention to deserving works and authors. Some of

7923-711: The Pickwick Club (1837), all of which lack the complexity or stylistic characteristics which audiences praise in the authors' later work. There are however some debut novels that are regarded as the author's masterpiece , for example Gustave Flaubert 's Madame Bovary , Joseph Heller 's Catch 22 , Günter Grass ' The Tin Drum and Chinua Achebe 's Things Fall Apart . Sometimes, instead of writing novels to begin their career, some authors will start with short stories , which can be easier to publish and allow authors to get started in writing fiction. According to

8062-460: The Starkadders". It is, observed Neville, an irony that the overheated melodrama that Gibbons most disliked was at the heart of her one great success; Gibbons's writings on everyday life brought her restrained approval, but no noticeable literary recognition. Nevertheless, her straightforward, style, unadorned except in parody, is admired by Rachel Cooke, who praises her as "a sworn enemy of

8201-412: The University of London Act 2018, which allowed member institutions to become universities in their own right while remaining part of the University of London, UCL applied for university status in 2019. The application was approved by the Office for Students in 2022 and a supplemental charter was sealed on 17 April 2023, granting UCL university status. UCL is primarily based in the Bloomsbury area of

8340-452: The University of London for a eugenics laboratory; this transferred to UCL in 1907 with Karl Pearson as its director. UCL apologised for its "fundamental role in the development, propagation and legitimisation of eugenics" in 2021. In 1911, UCL received an anonymous donation of £30,000 (equivalent to £3,860,000 in 2023) for a building for its school of architecture . In 1919 the donor consented to being named as Herbert Bartlett and

8479-408: The University of London. On 1 January 2012 the School of Pharmacy, University of London merged with UCL, becoming the UCL School of Pharmacy within the Faculty of Life Sciences. UCL and the Institute of Education formed a strategic alliance in October 2012, followed by a full merger in December 2014. UCL paid tens of thousands of pounds to settle ten sexual harassment claims against staff in

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8618-468: The academic English Literature world ought to be high, her literary status is indeterminate. She did not promote herself, and was indifferent to the attractions of public life: "I'm not shy", she told Oliver, "I'm just unsociable". Truss records that Gibbons had "overtly rejected the literary world ... she didn't move in literary circles, or even visit literary squares, or love in literary triangles". Truss posits further reasons why Gibbons did not become

8757-528: The academic year and for students who are care-leavers. There is only limited accommodation available in university halls for returning students and others who do not meet the criteria for a guaranteed place. UCL students are also eligible, as students of a member institution of the University of London, to apply for places in the University of London intercollegiate halls of residence . In 2013, UCL's newly built New Hall student accommodation building on Caledonian Road , designed by Stephen George and Partners,

8896-481: The author gains a literary reputation. There are exceptions, however; YouTuber Zoella published her debut novel Girl Online in November 2014, and the book sold 78,109 copies in Britain in its first week. The novel saw huge sales because she already had an established audience, and publishers were willing to run a large print run. By comparison, bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey sold 14,814 copies in its first week, or later popular novels, like Harry Potter and

9035-471: The author's typical literary characteristics . Huffington Post ' s Dave Astor attributes these to two forces: first that authors are still learning their own unique style and audiences are more willing to read works from unknown authors if they resemble more conventional styles of literature. As examples, Astor points to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman (1969) and Charles Dickens' The Posthumous Papers of

9174-481: The book continued to be lauded by successive generations of critics, Boston described it as "one of those rare books of comic genius that imprints itself on the brain and can never afterwards be eradicated". A more negative view of the book has been expressed by the literary critic Mary Beard , who considers it "a rather controlling victory of modern order, cleanliness, contraception and medicine over these messy, different, rural types ... I found myself screaming for

9313-424: The book to "some unignorable old uncle, to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but is often an embarrassment and a bore". Gibbons made her last overseas trip in 1966, to Grenoble in France where she visited her old friend Elizabeth Coxhead. This visit provided material for her 1968 novel The Snow Woman in which Gibbons overcame her habitual distaste for emotional excess by opening

9452-499: The book to the exclusion of the rest of her output. Widely regarded as a one-work novelist, she and her works have not been accepted into the canon of English literature—partly, other writers have suggested, because of her detachment from the literary world and her tendency to mock it. The Gibbons family originated from Ireland. Stella's grandfather, Charles Preston Gibbons, was a civil engineer who spent long periods in South Africa building bridges. He and his wife Alice had six children,

9591-420: The book with a melodramatic birth on a sofa. The Woods in Winter (1970) was her last published novel; she decided at that point that she was no longer prepared to subject her work to editorial control. In the 1980s she wrote two more novels for private circulation among friends, The Yellow Houses and An Alpha . These books – An Alpha retitled Pure Juliet – were published by Vintage Classics in 2016, after

9730-491: The book's 2011 reprint, Lynne Truss describes it as "a rich, mature novel, romantic and wistful, full of rounded characters and terrific dialogue" that deserved more commercial success than it received. The public's expectations were still prejudiced by Cold Comfort Farm , which by 1949 had sold 28,000 copies in hardback and 315,000 in paperback. Anticipating that a sequel would be popular, that year Gibbons produced Conference at Cold Comfort Farm , her shortest novel, in which

9869-604: The books have been reissued, usually by different publishers. First novel Sometimes new novelists will self-publish their debut novels, because publishing houses will not risk the capital needed to market books by an unknown author to the public. Most publishers purchase rights to novels, especially debut novels, through literary agents , who screen client work before sending it to publishers. These hurdles to publishing reflect both publishers' limits in resources for reviewing and publishing unknown works, and that readers typically buy more books from established authors with

10008-709: The calculation and reporting of foreign exchange rates, Gibbons was sacked from the BUP, but quickly found a new position as secretary to the editor of the London Evening Standard . Within a short time she was promoted, and became a reporter and features writer at the then substantial salary of just under £500 a year, although she was not given a by-line until 1928. During her Evening Standard years, Gibbons persevered with poetry, and in September 1927 her poem "The Giraffes" appeared in The Criterion ,

10147-473: The charter as the first two affiliates. The first students from UCL and King's matriculated as undergraduates in 1838 and the first degrees were awarded to students of the two colleges in 1839. There had been an intention to establish a course in engineering at the college's opening but no professor was appointed until 1840 or 1841, after engineering courses had started at Durham University (1837) and King's College London (1838). The Slade School of Fine Art

10286-779: The college merged with the Institute of Archaeology . In 1988, UCL merged with the Institute of Laryngology & Otology, the Institute of Orthopaedics, the Institute of Urology & Nephrology and Middlesex Hospital Medical School . Middlesex and University College hospitals, together with the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, formed the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust in 1994. Mergers continued in

10425-623: The college. From 1871 to 1872 these were held inside the college building, although still independently of the college. From 1872, some professors, particularly Edward Poynter of the Slade, started to admit women to their classes. The full opening on the faculties of arts, science and law in 1878 came two years after the admission of women alongside men at the University of Bristol from its foundation (as University College Bristol ) in 1876. The first woman to officially enrol in architecture at UCL

10564-482: The colleges and the desire for a "teaching university" in London led to royal commissions that reported in 1888 and 1892 and the reconstitution of the university under the University of London Act 1898. Following the University of London's reconstitution in 1909, transforming it from an examining board to a federal university with constituent "schools", UCL, became a school of the University of London. While most of

10703-508: The colleges that became schools of the university retained their autonomy, UCL chose to be merged into the university in 1907 under the University College London (Transfer) Act 1905 ( 5 Edw. 7 . c. xci) and surrendered its legal independence in return for gaining a greater say in the running of the university. Its formal name became University of London, University College , although for most informal and external purposes

10842-416: The comma used in its earlier name of University College, London . In 1993, a reorganisation of the University of London meant that UCL and other colleges gained direct access to government funding and the right to confer University of London degrees themselves. This led to UCL being regarded as a de facto university in its own right. Mergers were a major feature of this period of UCL's history. In 1986,

10981-501: The conference. Following the revelation, UCL announced in 2018 that it would launch an enquiry into the university's historical links with eugenics. This reported in 2020, but covered only historical eugenics and did not address the 2014–17 conferences, leading to a majority of the authors refusing to sign the final report. The Galton Lecture Theatre, Pearson Lecture Theatre and Pearson Building were all renamed in 2020, and in 2021 UCL apologised for its part in promoting eugenics during

11120-507: The country to Aberystwyth , Bangor, Gwynedd , Cambridge , Oxford , Rothamsted near Harpenden, Hertfordshire and Sheffield , with the administration at Stanstead Bury near Ware, Hertfordshire . The first UCL student newspaper, Pi , was founded in 1946. The Institute of Jewish Studies relocated from Manchester to UCL in 1959. The Mullard Space Science Laboratory was established in 1967. In 1973, Peter Kirstein's research group at UCL became one of only two international nodes on

11259-672: The course concentrated on linguistics and the modern teaching of English – studying English literature – was introduced by King's College London in 1831. In 1830, London University founded the London University School, which would later become University College School . In 1833, the university appointed Alexander Maconochie , secretary to the Royal Geographical Society , as the first professor of geography in Britain. Classes in medicine began at

11398-436: The day-to-day operations of the institution. This comprises the President and Provost, the vice-presidents, the vice-provosts, the pro-provost of UCL East, the deans of the faculties, the chief financial officer, chief information officer, and chief people officer, the chief of staff, the general consul, the executive director of media and marketing, and the director of media relations. The senior leadership team at UCL includes

11537-466: The elder Gibbons's household, and was dominated by Telford's frequent bouts of ill-temper, drinking, womanising and occasional acts of violence. Stella later described her father as "a bad man, but a good doctor". He was charitable to his poorer patients and imaginative in finding cures, but made life miserable for his family. Initially Stella was his favourite, but by the time she reached puberty he frequently mocked her looks and size. Fortunately, her mother

11676-513: The end of 1932, to resign her position with The Lady and to embark on a full-time writing career. In March 1931 Gibbons had become engaged to Allan Webb, a budding actor and opera singer five years her junior. He was the son of a cricketing parson , and the grandson of Allan Becher Webb , a former Bishop of Bloemfontein who served as Dean of Salisbury Cathedral . On 1 April 1933 the couple were married at St Matthew's, Bayswater . Later in 1933 she learned that Cold Comfort Farm had been awarded

11815-443: The exception of courses on public health and hygiene). UCL's admission of women in 1878 came almost three decades after Bedford College became the first institution to offer university-level education for women in Britain, and the establishment of the University of London's General Examination for Women in 1868. The Ladies' Educational Association held classes for women from 1868, taught by professors from UCL but independently of

11954-522: The excitement of finding authors and writers without established legacies. In the same piece for the Times , Ayana Mathis describes the debut novel as "a piece of the writer's soul in a way that subsequent books can't ever be", because the novel is necessarily a work of passion and a product of all of their life before that moment. Often an author's first novel will not be as complex stylistically or thematically as subsequent works and often will not feature

12093-571: The family home was in Oakshott Avenue, on the Holly Lodge Estate off Highgate West Hill , where Gibbons regularly worked in the mornings from ten until lunchtime. Her novels were generally well received by critics and the public, though none earned the accolades or attention that had been given to Cold Comfort Farm ; readers of The Times were specifically warned not to expect Gibbons's second novel, Bassett (1934), to be

12232-483: The farm has become a conference centre and tourist attraction. There is much mockery of contemporary and indeed future artistic and intellectual trends, before the male Starkadders return from overseas, wreck the centre and restore the farm to its original primitive state. The book was moderately successful but, Oliver remarks, does not compare with the original. "The shapely story is guided to an ending which satisfies those readers (if such there be) who care whether Elinor

12371-525: The first collection of Gibbons's verses, entitled The Mountain Beast , which appeared in 1930 to critical approval. By this time her by-line was appearing with increasing frequency in the Standard . As part of a series on "Unusual Women" she interviewed, among others, the former royal mistress Lillie Langtry . The paper also published several of Gibbons's short stories. Despite this evident industry, Gibbons

12510-497: The first half of the 20th century. UCL was criticised (along with Oxford, Imperial and other London universities) in 2021 for accepting money from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, established to hold the fortune left to Max Mosley by his father, British fascist leader Oswald Mosley . UCL received £500,000 to establish a forensic evidence interpretation laboratory. Following the passing of

12649-498: The flatulent, the pompous and the excessively sentimental." While short of sentimentality, Gibbons's writing, in prose or verse, did not lack sensitivity. She had what one analyst described as "a rare ability to enter into the feelings of the uncommunicative and to bring to life the emotions of the unremarkable". Some of Gibbons's poetry expressed her love of nature and a prophetic awareness for environmental issues such as sea pollution, decades before such concerns became fashionable. In

12788-403: The form of a joint stock company , with shares sold for £100 (equivalent to £10,600 in 2023) to proprietors, under the name of London University , although without legal recognition as a university or the associated right to award degrees. London University's first warden was Leonard Horner , who was the first scientist to head a British university. Despite the commonly held belief that

12927-536: The government's proposal to establish the University of London as an independent examining body, accepting the status of a college for their institution. As a result, the proprietors of London University were incorporated by royal charter under the name University College, London on 28 November 1836. On the same day, the University of London was created by royal charter as a degree-awarding examining board for students from affiliated schools and colleges, with University College and King's College , London being named in

13066-720: The grade II listed Rockefeller Building. Elsewhere in Bloomsbury is the 1970s grade II* Institute of Education building by Denys Lasdun and Partners. Much of the estate falls within the Bloomsbury Conservation Area , designated in 1968. Important contemporary buildings include the School of Slavonic and East European Studies building ( RIBA Award winner 2006) and the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour building ( LEAF Award for best façade design and engineering and overall winner 2016). In August 2024, UCL won

13205-403: The highly anticipated City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg captured the attention of ten publishers who started a bidding war that ended with Knopf buying the rights to the book for 2 million dollars. The book's film production rights were purchased soon after by producer Scott Rudin . For similar reasons that advances are frequently not very large—novels frequently do not sell well until

13344-502: The impact of the original. When the collection was reissued many years later it was described as "oddly comforting and amusing ... and possibly a truer depiction of the times than we might think". Gibbons published three novels during the war: The Rich House (1941), Ticky (1942) and The Bachelor (1944). Ticky , a satire on mid-nineteenth century army life, was Gibbons's favourite of all her novels, although she acknowledged that hardly anyone liked it. It failed commercially, despite

13483-492: The importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality in her prose might, according to Gibbons's Guardian obituarist Richard Boston , be a reaction against the turbulent and sometimes violent emotions that she witnessed within her own family who, she said, "were all madly highly-sexed, like

13622-528: The latter of which, "Fairford Church", concludes with the words: "Little is sure. Life is hard./We love, we suffer and die./But the beauty of the earth is real/And the Spirit is nigh." Gibbons's writing has been praised by critics for its perspicacity, sense of fun, charm, wit and descriptive skill—the last a product of her journalistic training—which she used to convey both atmosphere and character. Although Beauman refers to "malicious wit", Truss sees no cruelty in

13761-451: The mainstream of metropolitan literary life, and from time to time mock it. After many years in which almost all of Gibbons's output has been out of print, in 2011 the publishers Vintage Classics reissued paperback versions of Westwood , Starlight , and Conference at Cold Comfort Farm . They also announced plans to publish 11 of the other novels, on a print-on-demand basis. Publisher information relates to first publication only. Many of

13900-529: The manuscripts were released by Gibbons's family. The last two decades of Gibbons's life were uneventful and lived almost entirely beyond the public eye. She kept her health and looks until almost the end of her life—in a biographical sketch, Jill Neville recorded that "her beauty endured, as did her upright carriage, typical of Edwardian ladies who were forced as girls to walk around with a book balanced on their heads." As well as her unpublished novels she wrote occasional short stories, two of which were rejected by

14039-518: The members of Coldplay . UCL academics discovered five of the naturally occurring noble gases , discovered hormones , invented the vacuum tube , and made several foundational advances in modern statistics. As of 2024, 32 Nobel Prize winners and three Fields medallists have been affiliated with UCL as alumni or academic staff. UCL was founded on 11 February 1826 as an alternative to the Anglican universities of Oxford and Cambridge . It took

14178-691: The mining company BHP Billiton agreed to donate AU$ 10 million to UCL to fund the establishment of two energy institutes – the Energy Policy Institute, based in Adelaide, and the Institute for Sustainable Resources, based in London. UCL Australia closed in December 2017, with academic staff and student transferring to the University of South Australia . Since 2018, UCL and the University of South Australia have offered joint master's degrees in data science and in energy systems with study in Adelaide and London. In 2011, UCL announced plans for

14317-866: The more prestigious awards around the world include the American Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award , the French Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman , the British Guardian First Book Award , the German Aspekte-Literaturpreis and the Japanese Noma Literary Prize . The New York Times commentator Leslie Jamison described the big, and often very public, "to do" about debut novels and novelists created by these book awards, as associated with

14456-454: The name "University College, London" (or the initialism UCL) was still used. As of 2022, it remains listed as "University of London: University College" on US Federal Student Aid applications. 1900 also saw the decision to appoint a salaried head of the college. The first incumbent was Carey Foster , who served as Principal (as the post was originally titled) from 1900 to 1904. He was succeeded by Gregory Foster (no relation), and in 1906

14595-553: The name of a farm in the Hinckley area. Gibbons was delighted with the suggestion, and the work was published as Cold Comfort Farm in September 1932. The plot concerns the efforts of "a rational, bossy London heroine" to bring order and serenity to her rustic relations, the Starkadders, on their run-down Sussex farm. According to the Feminist Companion to Literature in English , Gibbons's parody "[demolishes] ...

14734-579: The often barbed humour, which reflected Gibbons's detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm , with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights

14873-535: The opening of the college in 1828, and in 1834 University College Hospital (originally North London Hospital) opened as a teaching hospital for these classes, which were organised into a faculty of medicine in 1836. After almost a decade of attempting to win recognition as a university and the right to award degrees, including an Address to the Crown from the House of Commons, the proprietors of London University accepted

15012-454: The philosopher Jeremy Bentham was the founder of UCL, his direct involvement was limited to the purchase of share No. 633, at a cost of £100 paid in nine instalments between December 1826 and January 1830. In 1828, he did nominate a friend to sit on the council, and in 1827, attempted to have his disciple John Bowring appointed as the first professor of English or History, but on both occasions his candidates were unsuccessful. However, Bentham

15151-449: The provost, three UCL professors and three non-professorial staff; and two are UCL students. The chair is appointed by council for a term not normally exceeding five years. The chair is ex officio chair of the honorary degrees and fellowships committee, nominations committee and remuneration and strategy committee. As of April 2023, the chair of the council is international businessman and UCL alumnus Victor Chu. The academic board plays

15290-434: The radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham , UCL was the first university institution to be established in London, and the first in England to be entirely secular and to admit students regardless of their religion. It was also among the first university colleges to admit women alongside men in 1878, two years after University College, Bristol . Intended by its founders to be England's third university , politics forced it to accept

15429-440: The recommendation of the provost or the academic board, to assist and advise the provost as required. The vice-provosts are members of the provost's senior management team. There are four vice-provosts (for education and student experience; health; research, innovation and global engagement; and faculties). There are also four vice-presidents, who are also members of the senior management team but whose role and manner of appointment

15568-600: The rest of Gibbons's career. Neville thought that after so singular a success at the start of her career, the rest was something of an anticlimax, despite her considerable industry and undoubted skills. The 1985 edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature defines Gibbons solely in terms of Cold Comfort Farm ; it mentions none of her other works—while providing her bêtes noires Morgan and Mary Webb with full entries. To Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm became "That Book" or "You-Know-What", its title never mentioned. Despite her growing irritation and expressed distaste for it,

15707-485: The rights of these poor country folk NOT to fall into the hands of people like Flora". "For Gibbons, the suburb offered an ideal vantage point for exploring both urban modernity and countryside traditionalism, and for observing both literary modernism and the vestigial Romanticism of popular rural fiction." Faye Hammill: "Stella Gibbons: Ex-centricity and the Suburb" Although Boston suggested that Gibbons's rating in

15846-664: The school in 1917. Although a moderate performer in school subjects, Stella found outlets for her talents by writing stories for her fellow-pupils, becoming vice president of the Senior Dramatic Club, and featuring prominently in the school's Debating Society, of which she became the honorary secretary. While at school, Gibbons formed an ambition to be a writer, and on leaving in 1921 began a two-year Diploma in Journalism at University College , London (UCL). The course had been established for ex-servicemen returning from

15985-628: The school was renamed in his honour. UCL sustained considerable bomb damage during the Second World War, including the complete destruction of the Great Hall, the Carey Foster Physics Laboratory and the Ramsay Laboratory. Fires gutted the library and destroyed much of the main building, including the dome; it was not until 1954 that the main building was fully restored. The departments were dispersed across

16124-465: The second of whom—the eldest of four sons—was born in 1869 and was known by his fourth Christian name of "Telford". The Gibbons household was a turbulent one, with tensions arising from Charles Gibbons's frequent adulteries. Telford Gibbons trained as a doctor, and qualified as a physician and surgeon at the London Hospital in 1897. On 29 September 1900 he married Maude Williams, the daughter of

16263-477: The standards that cover residential buildings, such as having daylight in the rooms. The UCL East development includes 532 student rooms in One Pool Street, which opened in 2022. Further accommodation will be available in the Marshgate building, expected to open in 2023, and at the second Pool Street site. UCL's new Student Centre, which opened in 2019, was designed to be environmentally friendly and

16402-524: The status of a college in 1836, when it received a royal charter and became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London , although it achieved de facto recognition as a university in the 1990s and formal university status in 2023. It has grown through mergers, including with the Institute of Ophthalmology (in 1995), the Institute of Neurology (in 1997), the Royal Free Hospital Medical School (in 1998),

16541-482: The stereotypical view of suburbia as unexciting, conventional and limited. Instead, says Hammill, "Gibbons's fictional suburbs are socially and architecturally diverse, and her characters—who range from experimental writers to shopkeepers—read and interpret suburban styles and values in varying and incompatible ways". Hammill adds that Gibbons's strong identification with her own suburban home, in which she lived for 53 years, may have influenced her preference to stay outside

16680-426: The stock-in-trade of earthy regionalists such as Thomas Hardy , Mary Webb, Sheila Kaye-Smith and D. H. Lawrence". The literary scholar Faye Hammill describes the work as "an extremely sophisticated and intricate parody whose meaning is produced through its relationship with the literary culture of its day and with the work of such canonical authors as D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, and Emily Brontë ". In her history of

16819-663: The term becoming more widely used after about 1980, gaining in popularity since. University College, London University College London ( branded as UCL ) is a public research university in London , England. It is a member institution of the federal University of London , and is the second-largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment and the largest by postgraduate enrolment. Established in 1826 as London University (though without university degree-awarding powers) by founders inspired by

16958-604: The title was changed to Provost to avoid confusion with the principal of the University of London. Gregory Foster remained in post until 1929. In 1906, the Cruciform Building was opened as the new home for University College Hospital . UCL opened the first department and chair of chemical engineering in the UK, funded by the Ramsay Memorial Fund, in 1923. In 1904, Francis Galton donated £1,000 to

17097-422: The world's largest academic health science centre . It is considered part of the " golden triangle " of research-intensive universities in southeast England. UCL has publishing and commercial activities including UCL Press, UCL Business and UCL Consultants. UCL has many notable alumni, including the founder of Mauritius, the first Prime Minister of Japan, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA , and

17236-494: Was Gertrude Leverkus in 1915, although Ethel and Bessie Charles had been allowed to audit classes in the 1890s. Women were finally admitted to medical studies during the First World War in 1917, although limitations were placed on their numbers after the war ended. A new royal charter granted to the University of London in 1858 effectively removed the affiliation of colleges to the university. Dissatisfaction from

17375-500: Was Westwood (1946). The book incorporates a comic depiction of the novelist Charles Morgan , whose novel The Fountain Gibbons had reviewed before the war and found "offensive as well as wearisome". In Westwood , Morgan appears in the guise of the playwright "Gerard Challis", a pompous, humourless bore. Oliver considers this characterisation to be one of Gibbons's "most enjoyable and vicious" satirical portraits. In her introduction to

17514-586: Was a calm and stabilising influence. Until Stella reached the age of 13 she was educated at home by a succession of governesses, who never stayed long. The family's bookshelves provided reading material, and she developed a talent for storytelling with which she amused her young brothers. In 1915 Stella became a pupil at the North London Collegiate School , then situated in Camden Town . The school, founded in 1850 by Frances Buss ,

17653-450: Was among the first in England to offer girls an academic education, and by 1915 was widely recognised as a model girls' school. After the haphazard teaching methods of her governesses, Stella initially had difficulty in adjusting to the strict discipline of the school, and found many of its rules and practices oppressive. She shared this attitude with her contemporary Stevie Smith , the future Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry winner, who joined

17792-522: Was awarded her diploma. Gibbons's first job was with the British United Press (BUP) news agency, where she decoded overseas cables which she rewrote in presentable English. During slack periods she practised at writing articles, stories and poems. She made her first trips abroad, travelling to France in 1924 and Switzerland in 1925. Swiss Alpine scenery inspired several poems, some of which were later published. In 1924 she met Walter Beck,

17931-473: Was awarded the Carbuncle Cup and named the country's worst new building by Building Design magazine, with the comment "this is a building that the jury struggled to see as remotely fit for human occupation". Islington Council had originally turned down planning permission for the building, but this had been overturned on appeal. As it is classified as a hotel or guest house, it was exempt from many of

18070-488: Was born that year. The advent of war in September 1939 did not diminish Gibbons's creative energy. In November she began a series of articles, "A Woman's Diary of the War", for St Martin's Review , the journal of the London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields . The series ran until November 1943, and includes many of Gibbons's private reflections on the conflict. In October 1941 she wrote: "[T]he war has done me good ... I get

18209-467: Was discovered in 2018 that an annual eugenics conference, the London Conference on Intelligence , had been held at UCL, as an external paid event, between 2014 and 2017. An enquiry found that the organiser, an honorary lecturer, did not correctly follow the room booking procedure, including claiming that no controversial topics would be discussed, leaving the university unaware of the nature of

18348-577: Was dismissed from the Standard in August 1930. This was ostensibly an economy measure although Gibbons, in later life, suspected other reasons, particularly the increasing distraction from work that arose from her relationship with Walter Beck. The engagement had ended painfully in 1928, primarily because Gibbons was looking for a fully committed relationship whereas he wanted something more open. Oliver believes Gibbons never entirely got over Beck, even after 1929 when she met Allan Webb, her future husband. She

18487-407: Was founded as part of University College in 1871, following a bequest from Felix Slade . In 1878, the University of London gained a supplemental charter making it the first British university to be allowed to award degrees to women. The same year, UCL admitted women to the faculties of Arts and Law and of Science, although women remained barred from the faculties of Engineering and of Medicine (with

18626-516: Was from research grants and contracts. The university generates around £10 billion annually for the UK economy, primarily through the spread of its research and knowledge (£4 billion) and the impact of its own spending (£3 billion). UCL is a member of numerous academic organisations, including the Russell Group and the League of European Research Universities , and is part of UCL Partners ,

18765-525: Was long out of print before a modest revival in the 21st century. The daughter of a London doctor, Gibbons had a turbulent and often unhappy childhood. After an indifferent school career she trained as a journalist, and worked as a reporter and features writer, mainly for the Evening Standard and The Lady . Her first book, published in 1930, was a collection of poems which was well received, and through her life she considered herself primarily

18904-637: Was not unemployed for long; she quickly accepted a job offer as an editorial assistant at the women's magazine, The Lady . Here, according to The Observer writer Rachel Cooke , "she applied her versatility as a writer to every subject under the sun bar cookery, which was the province of a certain Mrs Peel." At the same time she began work on the novel that would become Cold Comfort Farm ; her colleague and friend Elizabeth Coxhead recorded that Gibbons "neglected her duties disgracefully" to work on this project. In her time with The Lady , Gibbons established

19043-468: Was now the family's principal breadwinner; her youngest brother Lewis was still at school, while the elder, Gerald, was intermittently employed as an actor. The three set up home in a cottage on the Vale of Health , a small settlement in the middle of Hampstead Heath, with literary connections to Keats (whom Gibbons revered), Leigh Hunt and D. H. Lawrence . Later that year, as a result of an error involving

19182-536: Was one of only 320 buildings worldwide (at the time) to be certified outstanding by BREEAM . This certification requires innovation throughout the design, engineering and construction process, and places the Student Centre among the top 1% of non-domestic buildings in the UK for sustainability. The UCL Student Centre was a finalist at the Green Gown Awards in 2019. Also in 2019, UCL launched

19321-641: Was presented to the Keats-Shelley Memorial House museum in Rome. Gibbons maintained a wide circle of friends, who in her later years included Adams, the entertainer Barry Humphries and the novelist John Braine . From the mid-1970s she established a pattern of monthly literary tea parties in Oakshott Avenue at which, according to Neville, "she was known to expel guests if they were shrill, dramatic, or wrote tragic novels." As her own productivity dwindled and finally ceased altogether, she kept

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