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society’ (p. 150) – and as well as developing professional training in theology, the university founded a chair of engineering, one of the first in Britain along with Glasgow and King’s London, and attempted to develop a medical school at Durham. But these initiatives, despite the appointment of able teachers, did not succeed. The university’s situation in a small cathedral town rather than the more metropolitan Newcastle upon Tyne was not itself a source of weakness. There were parallels in other European countries, and indeed in Scotland at St Andrews. It was often thought desirable to shield youngmen from the temptations of the big city.Nevertheless, the proximity ofNewcastle tended to drain activity away fromDurham. Like other provincial towns in England,Newcastle developed its own hospital-based medical school – in fact, rival schools, one of which became affiliated to DurhamUniversity– andAndrews has a valuable chapter on this. In later years, themedical school and the College of Physical Science opened in 1871 developed into a full university college awarding Durham degrees, and it was only in the 1960s that Newcastle became independent. For Andrews, the university’s lack of success in its early years was due partly to the hostility of the professions, especially engineering, to university-based rather than practical training, and partly to the general lack of real demand for university education in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, a Europe-wide phenomenon. Oxford and Cambridge had a secure function in giving liberal education to a social elite, but the colleges in London, and Owens College in Manchester founded in 1851, struggled like Durham to attract students. It was not until the 1870s that university education in the English provinces began to flourish. Andrews’ book is valuable for drawing attention to these wider trends, and has some interesting pieces of information as well as useful graphs of student enrolments. Durham seems to have invented the idea of external examiners by bringing Oxford dons in to guarantee its standards, though it was Scotland that put the practice on a statutory basis in 1858. It was also to pioneer overseas links, extending its degrees to Codrington College in Barbados (1875) and Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone (1876). Matthew Andrews’ book will perhaps not satisfy those in search of a straightforward history of Durham University. The book is aimed more at specialists in university history and the broader history of Victorian culture, and they will appreciate its scholarly contribution to understanding a still neglected period.