Early Life and Education
Bostridge was born on 25 December 1964 to Leslie Bostridge and Lillian (née Clark). He studied at Dulwich College Preparatory School and Westminster School, where he was a Queen's Scholar. He then attended the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where he achieved a First in modern history and received an M.Phil in the history and philosophy of science. He received his D.Phil from Oxford in 1990, on the significance of witchcraft in English public life from 1650 to 1750, and was a British Academy post-doctoral fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, before embarking on a career as a singer. His book "Witchcraft and its Transformations 1650 to 1750" was published as an Oxford Historical Monograph in 1997. This has been an influential work in the study of the pre-Enlightenment, "achieving that rarest of feats in the scholarly world: taking a well-worn subject and ensuring that it will never be looked at in quite the same way again" (Noel Malcolm, TLS). In 1991 he won the National Federation of Music Societies Award and from 1992 received support from the Young Concert Artists Trust.
Read more about this topic: Ian Bostridge
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“What is art,
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art’s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“The education of females has been exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty. ... though well to decorate the blossom, it is far better to prepare for the harvest.”
—Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870)