The British Uni

This is an overview of the structure of the UK university system:
http://www.euroeducation.net/prof/ukco.htm


This is about the reform of academic tenure in the United Kingdom during the Thatcher era:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818898000179

You have to purchase the above article about tenure. If that isn't a possibility, this news article and comments about the reform of tenure in the UK may give you some of the needed background:


Journey of a cut - how Salford University took the pain
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8545982.stm

Your character would have been educated prior to to the establishment of the "newer universities". If not Oxford, he would have been an undergraduate at a university named after a main city (e.g. *Manchester University, London University) following a four year course, with the third year spent as a teaching assistant in Germany. His tuition would be free and his living expenses subsidized by small government grant according to parental income. His Ph.D. would normally take another three years by thesis, often at another university, again with free tuition and slightly higher subsistence grant, (perhaps supplemented by undergraduate tuition). His subsequent appointment at Oxford, specifically implies he obtained "a first" or a "two-one" at undergraduate level, and that his Ph.D thesis was either published, or was supervised by a renowned mentor.

*(NOT Salford. If in doubt ask me by PM.)

Hope this helps.

Wow! How can I thank each of you enough?

I'm not certain how much I am going to go into details about his life before he meets the heroine.

The story begins in 1967, the year she begins graduate school and follows her through that first year. Then it jumps ahead 12 years, to a chance meeting in the airport when he asks to sit with her while waiting for their flight to San Francisco to attend MLA.

I'm not certain where it is going: I've written four endings, two versions of them together, two versions with her being unable to make a commitment.

Allow me to suggest that the specialism of the lecturer (perhaps in the works of Thomas Mann , Hermann Hesse etc) allows for a semantic backcloth against which to set his thoughts and actions. (Scene setting is often done by short quotations as chapter headings)

I thought of making him a Medievalist. At least I know something about the Medieval period.

Probably harder to utilize as suggested but best to stick with what you know.

Not really. There are no chapters, so your suggestion of epigraphs wouldn't work. If I were to change my conception of the character, then I would have to read the entire works of Mann or Hesse, which, for me, is not practical at this time.

Since I worked in Medieval Celtic literature and love Medieval music, the fit is natural for me. Besides, I have several dialog elements that depend on his having been to the US previously which are based on events that took place within the department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at an American university that I can adapt more freely by moving my hero into Germanic Languages and Literatures, which would include all the Scandinavian stuff.

Whole opus may not be required if you look say at Hesse stories like "Steppenwolf" or "Siddhartha". But maybe for your second novel ...!

Ah . . . the second one . . . magical realism set on the Massachusetts-Vermont border. It was going to be the first but this one shoved it out of the way, insisting I write it first.