In 1850, St Mary’s began in Hammersmith, west London, as a training college for teachers, with just a dozen students. In the 1920s, it moved to larger campus in Strawberry Hill. Today, there are 6,000 undergraduates and a growing number of postgrads doing research. St Mary’s gained full university status in 2014 and now has three faculties spread across a leafy campus in affluent south-west London that includes Horace Walpole’s celebrated Gothic Revival Strawberry Hill House. On a bright July morning, the place was looking positively arcadian when I arrived to meet its vice-chancellor, Professor Anthony McClaran.
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