Lord Nuffield: An Illustrated Life of William Richard Morris, Viscount Nuffield, 1877-1963 (Shire Library)

It is largely as a result of the career of William Richard Morris, Viscount Nuffield, that the university city of oxford became one of Britain's foremost industrial cities. William Morris left school at fourteen and because he had shown an aptitude for taking things to pieces and reassembling them he was apprenticed to a bicycle repairer. Within nine months he set up his own cycle business and from then on his rise to become one of Britain's leading industrialists. Though not a great engineer, he was an astute business man and expert mechanic; he saw the need for a small economical car that was of high quality yet could be produced in large numbers. His special talent enabled him to obtain the right parts and to assemble them, and so the first Morris Oxford car appeared in 1913. Production boomed in the 1920s and morris became a millionaire and was made a peer, but he was generous with money and gave away over GBP30,000,000 in his lifetime, much of it to hospitals and other medical causes, in which he had a deep interest. He also financed the establishment of Nuffield College, Oxford, which bears his title. His name ceased to appear on motorcars after 1983 when Morris Motors was part of British Leyland, but the MG (Morris Garages) badge has survived.