Ever to Excel

The University of St Andrews is Scotland’s first university, and one of the oldest in the English-speaking world. Ever to Excel, lavishly illustrated from the University’s rich historical collections, traces over six centuries of vibrant history, placing the University in the context of cultural, societal and political developments from local to international. Throughout its history St Andrews has wielded influence out of proportion to its tiny size: as the head of the Scottish church until the fiery events of the sixteenth-century Reformation; as a fulcrum of intellectual activity throughout centuries; and still today as a world-leading centre of scholarship. This new, revised and expanded edition is resplendent with fresh illustrations. It revises the story of the foundation of the University, based on new research, it expands the treatment of the 1950s and 1960s and it includes a new chapter about the University in the twenty-first century.