Last week I spent an evening at Christ Church college in Oxford. The Roxburghe Club, to which I belong, was being shown the magnificent library. On display was a first edition, 1687, of Isaac Newton’s Principia, bound in red goatskin. I reflected on what a powerful experience it must be for a fresh undergraduate to see this splendid library and get at least a glimpse of its range of learning.
Newton was a grammar school boy. Grammar schools are an essential part of English social history. They begin as a stage in the new learning of the Renaissance, associated with such figures as Thomas More or Erasmus, whose colloquies became a normal exercise in the early grammar schools. These schools were threatened by the