Bristol University is awarding honorary degrees to two prominent people at today’s degree ceremonies in the Wills Memorial Building [Friday, July 21].
Diana Wynne Jones, writer, will be honoured with the degree of Doctor of Letters at the 11.15 am ceremony.
Diana spent the first part of her childhood in the Lake District after being evacuated there at the onset of World War II. Towards the end of the war, Diana and her family moved to the village of Thaxted in Essex.
Educated at Quaker Friends School, just outside Saffon Walden, she later accepted a place at Oxford University, graduating with a degree in English in 1956.
It was whilst at University she developed her growing passion for writing, inspired by lectures given by the likes of C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien.
In 1956, she married John Burrow, later producing their three sons. Still living in Oxford, she devoted her time to raising her children, allowing her writing aspirations to simmer.
After her sons were grown and attending school, Diana began writing a succession of children’s fantasy books, Wilkins’ Tooth, Eight Days of Luke, The Ogre Downstairs, Dogsbody and Cart and Cwiddwer.
As a writer, Diana is recognised as one of the first authors to explore the concept of alternative or parallel universes in a children’s story. Each parallel universe that she creates is bound by a set of rules, their purpose is to provide a structure within which can be found solutions to dilemmas, often mirroring real life problems that can’t be resolved by the wave of a magic wand. As such, her stories help children to cope with everyday life.
In 1976, her husband John accepted a Professorship in English at Bristol University and the family moved to Bristol. During her residence here Diana has written over 20 books. Shortly after moving here she was awarded the 1977 Guardian Award for Children’s Books. In 2004, her novel Howl’s Moving Castle was adapted into a full-length film by the celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
As an acclaimed storyteller she has gained an international following and been awarded many prizes for the powerful and vivid imagination with which she creates fantasy worlds.
Linda Colley, Professor of History, Princeton University, USA will be honoured with the degree of Doctor of Letters at the 2.30 pm ceremony.
Linda was educated at Cardiff High School for Girls and went on to study at Bristol University, graduating with a First in History in 1972. She later went on to Cambridge University where she completed her PhD on the Tory party in the mid-eighteenth century.
In 1979 she was awarded a Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Her revised dissertation In Defiance of Oligarchy published in 1982, was a milestone in the historiography of eighteenth century politics. Her second book, Namier, in 1989 was an incisive retrospective on English historian, Sir Lewis Namier.
Three years later, Linda wrote the best seller, Britons. Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, winning her the Wolfson prize for History.
In 1982 she left Cambridge to join the History Faculty at Yale University in the US, remaining there for 16 years. In 1997 she returned to the UK to take up a Leverhulme Research Professorship, one of the most coveted competitive awards available in the humanities, at the London School of Economics. In 1999 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
In 2002 she published her fourth book, Captives. Britain, Empire and the World, 1600-1850 about Britain as a world power. In 2003 she moved to Princeton as Professor of History.