Legacy

Legacy, a new book by Philip Ziegler, chronicles the history of the Rhodes scholarships, 'perhaps the world's most celebrated, winning a renown for their founder after his death far greater than the opprobrium he earned during his life'. From The Economist:

..Plainly they would be very different from Rhodes himself. But that was not the only oddity of his bequest: his low opinion of academics was hard to reconcile with his zeal for a university education. And the inclusion of America among the countries that would send their finest to grease the wheels of Britain's empire was another peculiarity. Germany was even stranger. Yet the reason “the Rhodes scholarships are still exceptional lies in the vision of their creator.”

That is the view of their chronicler, Philip Ziegler, and he gives them pretty high marks. Famous names certainly abound among the former scholars: Robert Penn Warren (novelist and poet), Edwin Hubble (of telescope fame), Adam von Trott zu Solz (hanged for trying to kill Hitler), John Fairbank (eminent sinologist), Ernst Schumacher (small is beautiful), Bob Hawke (an Australian prime minister), two Nobel-prize-winning scientists and plenty more, including Bill Clinton.

Not all the 7,000-plus have found fame, but that was not Rhodes's intention: he wanted men “of moral force and character”. Some had that in spades, though not all used it for ends that would have delighted Rhodes. Norman Manley, who negotiated Jamaica's independence, hardly fitted the imperial ideal, nor did Dom Mintoff, a Maltese socialist who often irked the British, though for a time he favoured Malta's integration with Britain...