Reflections on the past

This is one of many stained glass windows in the Great Hall at the University of Birmingham - they reflect the trades that the University was training people for when it opened in the early 1900s - from brewing to medicine, metallurgy to arts of peace, healing to arts of war.

The windows are beautiful, occupying an entire four storey wall of the Aston Webb Building (itself an historic and architecturally fascinating construction).

This is one of my favourites - barter. Imagine the days when you could study that at university - perhaps in these times of Mandelson reform, not such a distant possibility again.