Strong Poison
Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears; the novel opens with mystery author Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her former lover, Phillip Boyes: a writer with strong views on atheism and free love. Publicly professing to disapprove of marriage, he had persuaded a reluctant Harriet to live with him, only to renounce his principles a year and to propose. Harriet, outraged at being deceived, had broken off the relationship. Following the separation, the former couple meet and the evidence at trial points to Boyes suffering from repeated bouts of gastric illness at around the time that Harriet was buying poisons under assumed names, to demonstrate – so she says – a plot point of her novel in progress. Boyes spends a holiday in North Wales, returns in better health, he dines with his cousin, the solicitor Norman Urquhart, before going to Harriet's flat to discuss reconciliation, where he accepts a cup of coffee.
That night he is taken fatally ill with gastritis. Foul play is suspected, a post-mortem reveals that Boyes died from acute arsenic poisoning. Apart from Harriet's coffee and the evening meal with his cousin, the victim appears to have taken nothing else that evening; the trial results in a hung jury. As a unanimous verdict is required, the judge orders a re-trial. Lord Peter Wimsey visits Harriet in prison, declares his conviction of her innocence and promises to catch the real murderer. Wimsey announces that he wishes to marry her, a suggestion that Harriet politely but declines. Working against time before the new trial, Wimsey first explores the possibility that Boyes took his own life. Wimsey's friend, Detective Inspector Charles Parker, disproves that theory; the rich great-aunt of the cousins Urquhart and Boyes, Rosanna Wrayburn, is old and senile, according to Urquhart when she dies most of her fortune will pass to him, with little going to Boyes. Wimsey suspects that to be a lie, sends his enquiry agent Miss Climpson to get hold of Rosanna's original will, which she does in a comic scene exposing the practices of fraudulent mediums.
The will in fact names Boyes as principal beneficiary. Wimsey plants a spy, Miss Joan Murchison, in Urquhart's office where she finds a hidden packet of arsenic, she discovers that Urquhart has abused his position as Rosanna's solicitor, embezzled her investments lost the money on the stock market. Urquhart realises that he will face inevitable exposure when Rosanna dies and Boyes comes forward to claim his inheritance. However, Boyes is unaware of the will's contents and Urquhart reasons that if Boyes were to die first nobody could challenge him as sole remaining beneficiary, his fraud would not be revealed. After perusing A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad Wimsey understands what had happened: Urquhart had administered the arsenic in an omelette which Boyes himself had cooked. Although Boyes and Urquhart had shared the dish, the latter had been unaffected as he had built up his own immunity beforehand by taking small doses of the poison over a long period. Wimsey tricks Urquhart into an admission before witnesses.
At Harriet's retrial, the prosecution presents no case and she is freed. Exhausted by her ordeal, she again rejects Wimsey's proposal of marriage. Wimsey persuades Parker to propose to Lady Mary, whom he has long admired; the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Wimsey's friend and stock market contact, finds a long-delayed domestic bliss with Rachel Levy, the daughter of the murder victim in Whose Body? Lord Peter Wimsey – protagonist and amateur detective Harriet Vane – protagonist, author of detective fiction Philip Boyes – Harriet's former lover, now deceased Norman Urquhart – Solicitor and Boyes' cousin Rosanna Wrayburn, or "Cremorna Garden" – great-aunt of Boyes and Urquhart, sometime stage performer, now senile and bedridden Charles Parker – police detective, friend of Wimsey Miss Katharine Climpson – enquiry agent Miss Joan Murchison – enquiry agent, employee of Miss Climpson Lady Mary Wimsey – Wimsey's younger sister, engaged to Parker The Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Wimsey's friend and stock market contact.
The novel's title appears in some variants of the Anglo-Scottish border ballad Lord Rendal whose title character was poisoned by his lover: In their review of crime novels, the US writers Barzun and Taylor called the novel "highest among the masterpieces. It has the strongest possible element of suspense – curiosity and the feeling one shares with Wimsey for Harriet Vane; the clues, the enigma, the free-love question, the order of telling could not be improved upon. As for the somber opening, with the judge's comments on how to make an omelet, it is sheer genius."The effect of arsenic as described in the novel was accepted by the science of the time, but it is now believed that long-term consumption would in fact have caused many health problems. The novel was adapted for a BBC television series in 1987 starring Edward Petherbridge as Lord Peter and Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane, it has been adapted for radio three times: While Sayers was working on her first novel, Whose Body?, she began a relationship with John Cournos, a writer of Russian-Jewish background.
Cournos was an advocate of free love: he did not believe in marriage and did not want children. Cournos pressed Sayers to have sex with contraception, but she, a High Anglican, resisted to avoid what she called "the taint of the rubber shop", their relationship foundered on the mismatch of expectations, an
Edward Petherbridge
Edward Petherbridge is an English actor and artist. Among his many roles, he portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey in the 1987 BBC television adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers' novels, Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. At the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1980, he was a memorable Newman Noggs in the company's adaptation of Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Petherbridge was born in West Bowling, the younger son of William and Hannah Petherbridge, he attended Grange Grammar School, where his favourite subjects were Art and English Literature. The composer Herbert Howells wrote of Petherbridge's boy soprano rendition, at the Wharfedale Festival, of Schubert's'Trout':'A fine young musician with a fine gift of word delivery.' Petherbridge trained as an actor at Esme Church's Northern Theatre School. At the time of national service in the 1950s, he was a conscientious objector, he made his professional stage debut at the Ludlow Festival in 1956, playing Gaveston in Marlowe's Edward II.
His first London appearance was at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in 1962 as Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Petherbridge began his tenure as part of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company in the 1960s, walking on in Olivier's Othello and creating the role of Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, he has been a leading actor in the Royal Shakespeare Royal National Theatre. He has been praised for both tragic and comic parts, interpreting a wide range of roles from Feydeau to Euripides, his major roles on stage include Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby. Petherbridge has performed in stage musicals, including The Woman in White, Lost in the Stars, The Fantasticks, and, most a musical version of The Importance of Being Earnest. On television, he has made appearances in Journey's End, Dead of Night, The Brief, Midsomer Murders, Land Girls and Doctors, his film roles include Richard St Ives in Mike Newell's An Awfully Big Adventure, Dr. Pritchard in Gulliver's Travels, Foster in A Christmas Carol, Dom Vladimir in The Statement, Aesculapius in Pope Joan, directed by Sonke Wortmann.
Petherbridge is a winner of the Olivier and London Theatre Critics' Awards, has twice been nominated for a Tony Award. He has been a recipient of the Sony Award for Best Actor in a Radio Drama. In 1989, Petherbridge was awarded an Honorary D. Litt. by the University of Bradford. Petherbridge is married to the actress Emily Richard, with whom he has appeared several times on stage, they have two children and Arthur. He has a son, David, by his first marriage to the New Zealand actress and director Louise Petherbridge. Petherbridge and his wife live in West Hampstead in North London. With his friend Kathleen Riley he is writing a history of NW6 and All That. In 2007, Petherbridge suffered two strokes while preparing to star in a production of King Lear, he fictionalised the experience in the play My Perfect Mind, co-written with Paul Hunter. His book, Slim Chances and Unscheduled Appearances was published in March 2011 and launched with a sell-out Platform at the National Theatre. At the same time he held his first art exhibition at Burgh House in Hampstead.
Petherbridge maintains a weekly blog, which features his poetry and short films. Petherbridge is the author of Pillar Talk, a one-man show about Saint Simeon Stylites, published in 2005, he has contributed to The Continuum Companion to Twentieth-Century Theatre. In 2011, Petherbridge published an autobiographical anthology of essays and artwork under the title Slim Chances and Unscheduled Appearances, which includes a foreword by Sir Ian McKellen. Edward Petherbridge on IMDb
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Christ Church is a joint foundation of the college and the cathedral of the Oxford diocese, which serves as the college chapel and whose dean is ex officio the college head. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, it is one of the larger colleges of the University of Oxford with 629 students in 2016, it is the second wealthiest college with an endowment of £550m as of 2018. Christ Church has a number of architecturally significant buildings including Tom Tower, Tom Quad, the Great Dining Hall, the seat of the parliament assembled by King Charles I during the English Civil War; the buildings have inspired replicas throughout the world in addition to being featured in films such as Harry Potter and The Golden Compass. This has helped Christ Church become the most popular Oxford college for tourists with half a million visitors annually. Christ Church has many notable alumni including thirteen British prime ministers, King Edward VII, King William II of the Netherlands, seventeen Archbishops, writers Lewis Carroll and W.
H. Auden, philosopher John Locke, scientist Robert Hooke. Christ Church is partly responsible for the creation of University College Reading, which gained its own Royal Charter and became the University of Reading; the first female undergraduates matriculated at Christ Church in 1980. In 1525, at the height of his power, Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor of England and Cardinal Archbishop of York, suppressed the Priory of St Frideswide in Oxford and founded Cardinal College on its lands, using funds from the dissolution of Wallingford Priory and other minor priories, he planned the establishment on a magnificent scale, but fell from grace in 1529, with the buildings only three-quarters complete, as they were to remain for 140 years. In 1531 the college was itself suppressed, but it was refounded in 1532 as King Henry VIII's College by Henry VIII, to whom Wolsey's property had escheated. In 1546 the King, who had broken from the Church of Rome and acquired great wealth through the dissolution of the monasteries in England, refounded the college as Christ Church as part of the reorganisation of the Church of England, making the demolished priory church the cathedral of the created Diocese of Oxford.
Christ Church's sister college in the University of Cambridge is Trinity College, founded the same year by Henry VIII. Since the time of Queen Elizabeth I the college has been associated with Westminster School; the dean remains to ex officio member of the school's governing body. Major additions have been made to the buildings through the centuries, Wolsey's Great Quadrangle was crowned with the famous gate-tower designed by Sir Christopher Wren. To this day the bell in the tower, Great Tom, is rung 101 times at 9 pm at the former Oxford time every night, for the 100 original scholars of the college. In former times this was done at midnight, signalling the close of all college gates throughout Oxford. Since it took 20 minutes to ring the 101, Christ Church gates, unlike those of other colleges, did not close until 12:20; when the ringing was moved back to 9:00 pm, Christ Church gates still remained open until 12.20, 20 minutes than any other college. Although the clock itself now shows GMT/BST, Christ Church still follows Oxford time in the timings of services in the cathedral.
King Charles I made the Deanery his palace and held his Parliament in the Great Hall during the English Civil War. In the evening of 29 May 1645, during the second siege of Oxford, a "bullet of IX lb. weight" shot from the Parliamentarians warning-piece at Marston fell against the wall of the north side of the Hall. Several of Christ Church's deans achieved high academic distinction, notably Owen under the Commonwealth and Fell in the Restoration period and Gaisford in the early 19th century and Liddell in the high Victorian era. For over four centuries Christ Church admitted men only. Christ Church, formally titled "The Dean and Students of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry the Eighth", is the only academic institution in the world, a cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Oxford; the Visitor of Christ Church is the reigning British sovereign, the Bishop of Oxford is unique among English bishops in not being the Visitor of his own cathedral. The head of the college is the Dean of Christ Church, an Anglican cleric appointed by the crown as dean of the cathedral church.
There are a senior and a junior censor the former of whom is responsible for academic matters, the latter for undergraduate discipline. A censor theologiae is appointed to act as the dean's deputy; the form "Christ Church College" is considered incorrect, in part because it ignores the cathedral, an integral part of the unique dual foundation. The governing body of Christ Church consists of the dean and chapter of the cathedral, together with the "Students of Christ Church", who are not junior members but rather the equivalent of the fellows of the other colleges; until the 19th century, the students differed from fellows in that they had no governing powers in their own college, these residing with the dean and chapter. Christ Church si
Jacques Barzun
Jacques Martin Barzun was a French-American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, classical music, was known as a philosopher of education. In the book Teacher in America, Barzun influenced the training of schoolteachers in the United States, he published more than forty books, was awarded the American Presidential Medal of Freedom, was dubbed a knight of the French Legion of Honor. The historical retrospective From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present considered his magnum opus, was published when he was 93 years old. Jacques Martin Barzun was born in Créteil, France, to Henri-Martin and Anna-Rose Barzun, spent his childhood in Paris and Grenoble, his father was a member of the Abbaye de Créteil group of artists and writers, worked in the French Ministry of Labor. His parents' Paris home was frequented by many modernist artists of Belle Époque France, such as the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the Cubist painters Albert Gleizes and Marcel Duchamp, the composer Edgard Varèse, the writers Richard Aldington and Stefan Zweig.
While on a diplomatic mission to the United States during the First World War, Barzun's father so liked the country he decided that his son should receive an American university education. As an undergraduate at Columbia College, Barzun was drama critic for the Columbia Daily Spectator, a prize-winning president of the Philolexian Society, the Columbia literary and debate club, valedictorian of the class of 1927, he obtained his Ph. D. from Columbia in 1932 and taught history there from 1928 to 1955, becoming the Seth Low Professor of History and a founder of the discipline of cultural history. For years, he and literary critic Lionel Trilling conducted Columbia's famous Great Books course, he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1954. From 1955 to 1968, he served as Dean of the Graduate School, Dean of Faculties, Provost, while being an Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. From 1968 until his 1975 retirement, he was University Professor at Columbia.
From 1951 to 1963 Barzun was one of the managing editors of The Readers' Subscription Book Club, its successor the Mid-Century Book Society, afterwards was Literary Adviser to Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975 to 1993. In 1936, Barzun married a violinist from a prominent Boston family, they had three children: James and Isabel. Mariana died in 1979. In 1980, Barzun married Marguerite Lee Davenport. From 1996 the Barzuns lived in San Antonio, Texas, his granddaughter Lucy Barzun Donnelly was a producer of the award-winning HBO film Grey Gardens. His grandson, Matthew Barzun, is a businessman who served from 2009-2011 as the U. S. Ambassador to Sweden, in 2013 was appointed Ambassador to the United Kingdom. On May 14, 2012 Jacques Barzun attended a symphony performance in his honor at which works by his favorite composer, Hector Berlioz, were performed, he delivered a brief address to the crowd. Barzun died peacefully at his home in San Antonio, Texas on October 25, 2012, aged 104; the New York Times, which compared him with such scholars as Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Lionel Trilling, called him a "distinguished historian, cultural gadfly and educator who helped establish the modern discipline of cultural history".
Naming Edward Gibbon, Jacob Burckhardt and Thomas Babington Macaulay as his intellectual ancestors, calling him "one of the West's most eminent historians of culture" and "a champion of the liberal arts tradition in higher education," who "deplored what he called the'gangrene of specialism'", The Telegraph remarked, "The sheer scope of his knowledge was extraordinary. Barzun’s eye roamed over the full spectrum of Western music, art and philosophy." Essayist Joseph Epstein, remembering him in the Wall Street Journal as a "flawless and magisterial" writer who tackled "Darwin, Wagner, William James, French verse, English prose composition, university teaching, detective fiction, the state of intellectual life", described Barzun as a tall, handsome man with an understated elegance Americanized, but retaining an air of old-world culture, cosmopolitan in an elegant way rare for intellectuals". Over seven decades, Barzun wrote and edited more than forty books touching on an unusually broad range of subjects, including science and medicine, psychiatry from Robert Burton through William James to modern methods, art, classical music.
Some of his books—particularly Teacher in America and The House of Intellect—enjoyed a substantial lay readership and influenced debate about culture and education far beyond the realm of academic history. Barzun had a strong interest in the mechanics of writing and research, he undertook the task of completing, from a manuscript two-thirds of, in first draft at the author's death, editing, the first edition of Follett's Modern American Usage. Barzun was the author of books on literary style, on the crafts of editing and publishing, on research methods in history and the other humanities (The Modern Researcher, which has seen at least six editions, is one of the thousand most hel
Poison pen letter
A poison pen letter is a letter or note containing unpleasant, abusive, or malicious statements or accusations about the recipient or a third party. It is sent anonymously. In the term "poison pen", the word poison is used figuratively, rather than literally. Poison pen letters are composed and sent to upset the recipient, they differ from blackmail, intended to obtain something from the recipient. In contrast, poison pen letters are purely malicious. In the United Kingdom, Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 covers most cases of poison pen letters. Hate mail Chain letter Stalking
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist and critic, whose work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry and polemical journalism, he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier, documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England, Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, are acclaimed, as are his essays on politics, literature and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture and the term "Orwellian"—descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices—has entered the language together with many of his neologisms, including "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Hate week", "Room 101", "memory hole", "newspeak", "doublethink", "proles", "unperson" and "thoughtcrime".
Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 in Motihari, British India. His great-grandfather, Charles Blair, was a wealthy country gentleman in Dorset who married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the Earl of Westmorland, had income as an absentee landlord of plantations in Jamaica, his grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman. Although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, his father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. His mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older; when Eric was one year old, his mother his sisters to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a protected monument of historical importance. In 1904 Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, the family did not see their husband or father, Richard Blair, until 1912.
His mother's diary from 1905 describes a lively round of artistic interests. Before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family their daughter Jacintha; when they first met, he was standing on his head in a field. On being asked why, he said, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up." Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, dreamed of becoming famous writers. He said. During this period, he enjoyed shooting and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister. Aged five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames, which Marjorie attended, it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family could not afford the fees, he needed to earn a scholarship. Ida Blair's brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprian's School, East Sussex.
Limouzin, a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, made a private financial arrangement that allowed Blair's parents to pay only half the normal fees. In September 1911, Eric arrived at St Cyprian's, he boarded at the school for the next five years. During this period, while working for the Ministry of Pensions, his mother lived at 23 Cromwell Crescent, Earls Court, he knew nothing of the reduced fees, although he "soon recognised that he was from a poorer home". Blair hated the school and many years wrote an essay "Such, Such Were the Joys", published posthumously, based on his time there. At St Cyprian's, Blair first met Cyril Connolly. Many years as the editor of Horizon, Connolly published several of Orwell's essays. While at St Cyprian's, Blair wrote two poems that were published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard.
He came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize, had his work praised by the school's external examiner, earned scholarships to Wellington and Eton. But inclusion on the Eton scholarship roll did not guarantee a place, none was available for Blair, he chose to stay at St Cyprian's until December 1916. In January, Blair took up the place at Wellington. In May 1917 a place became available as a King's Scholar at Eton. At this time the family lived at Notting Hill Gate. Blair remained at Eton until December 1921, when he left midway between his 19th birthday. Wellington was "beastly", Orwell told his childhood friend Jacintha Buddicom, but he said he was "interested and happy" at Eton, his principal tutor was A. S. F. Gow, Fellow of Trinity College, who gave him advice in his career. Blair was taught French by Aldous Huxley. Steven Runciman, at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's linguistic flair. Cyril Connolly followed Blair to Eton, but because they were in separate years
Alma mater
Alma mater is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university, school, or college that one attended. In US usage it can mean the school from which one graduated; the phrase is variously translated as "nourishing mother", "nursing mother", or "fostering mother", suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students. Fine arts will depict educational institutions using a robed woman as a visual metaphor. Before its current usage, alma mater was an honorific title for various Latin mother goddesses Ceres or Cybele, in Catholicism for the Virgin Mary, it entered academic usage when the University of Bologna adopted the motto Alma Mater Studiorum, which describes its heritage as the oldest operating university in the Western world. It is related to alumnus, a term used for a university graduate that means a "nursling" or "one, nourished". Although alma was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele and other mother goddesses, it was not used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin. In the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the phrase is attributed to Lucretius' De rerum natura, where it is used as an epithet to describe an earth goddess: After the fall of Rome, the term came into Christian liturgical usage in association with the Virgin Mary.
"Alma Redemptoris Mater" is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary. The earliest documented use of the term to refer to a university in an English-speaking country is in 1600, when the University of Cambridge printer, John Legate, began using an emblem for the university's press; the device's first-known appearance is on the title-page of William Perkins' A Golden Chain, where the Latin phrase Alma Mater Cantabrigia is inscribed on a pedestal bearing a nude, lactating woman wearing a mural crown. In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is cited in 1710, when an academic mother figure is mentioned in a remembrance of Henry More by Richard Ward. Many historic European universities have adopted Alma Mater as part of the Latin translation of their official name; the University of Bologna Latin name, Alma Mater Studiorum, refers to its status as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Other European universities, such as the Alma Mater Lipsiensis in Leipzig, Germany, or Alma Mater Jagiellonica, have used the expression in conjunction with geographical or foundational characteristics.
At least one, the Alma Mater Europaea in Salzburg, Austria, an international university founded by the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2010, uses the term as its official name. In the United States, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, has been called the "Alma Mater of the Nation" because of its ties to the country's founding. At Queen's University in Kingston and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, the main student government is known as the Alma Mater Society; the ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant. Modern sculptures are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses. For example, in the United States: there is a well-known bronze statue of Alma Mater by Daniel Chester French situated on the steps of Columbia University's Low Library. An altarpiece mural in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, painted in 1932 by Eugene Savage, depicts the Alma Mater as a bearer of light and truth, standing in the midst of the personified arts and sciences.
Outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. The statue was cast in 1919 by Mario Korbel, with Feliciana Villalón Wilson as the inspiration for Alma Mater, it was installed in its current location in 1927, at the direction of architect Raul Otero. Media related to Alma mater at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of alma mater at Wiktionary Alma Mater Europaea website
