Oxford came top for English language and literature, philosophy, modern languages and geography in the QS World University Rankings by subject.

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Finally, take the scenic route along the back of Merton College, where Tolkien was a professor of English language and literature between 1945 and 1959 after leaving Pembroke.

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Professor Nigel Leask, regius professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow, said Burns read widely in the contemporary literature on the subject while he was being trained.

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He was a connoisseur of fine wine and he never allowed his grievances over the Boer war, and over the gradual eclipse of Afrikaans by the English language in South Africa, to blind him to the glories of English literature.

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Conversations about schoolwork take on new zest when, rather than a specific work of literature or history, you are wrestling with the English language itself, sometimes pinned down by an immigrant youth, and sometimes throwing and clobbering the youth instead.

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On a recent trip to India, I spent a few days in Chennai (formerly Madras, the city where Macaulay landed), where the ubiquity of English-language bookstores testifies to a kind of symbiotic relationship with Anglo-American enthusiasm for Indian literature.

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