From Tophats to Wellingstons- the book about your faculty

This time last year saw the publication of ‘From Top Hats to Wellingtons’, a book about LIFE – the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, which was written in Danish but also translated into English.

The book, which consists of 47 articles, takes the reader through the entire history of the Danish Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University from its humble beginnings as a veterinary college at Christianshavn to its current status as LIFE – the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen at Frederiksberg. Along the way, you can read about the construction of Bindesbøll’s main building. About the explosion in the main lecture hall, about our museum and library, about the tower block and, of course, about Villa Rolighed, where it all started. Along the way, the book also includes the various artworks at the Faculty: The Dairymaid, who witnessed the demise of the helpless weeping willow, the small garden nymphs in the Sculpture Garden, our Storm P paintings and Bjørn Nørgaard’s ‘Biological Diversity’. 

Yes indeed, readers will also hear the story of the cow with the wooden leg, the smithy that died on the scaffold, and about what it was like being a student veterinary surgeon in 1863, and whether you can survive being a guinea pig in here?
Much of the book relates to the Faculty’s unique gardens, such as the gingko tree with its curious sex life, the fossilised tree which has come back to life, and is it really true that you can become prime minister if you take a nap under our weeping willow? Moreover, you can read about the Rose Garden and the Annual Flower Garden, and in the Medicinal Plant Garden you can read why you have to get hold of the neighbour’s dog if you want to dig up a mandrake root.

 

As you will have seen, the book covers a wide range of stories, but all of them relate in some way to the Faculty. Others, who have no connection to the Faculty, will nevertheless find it enjoyable reading, and it has received a very good librarian’s review for the Danish library service.

The first edition of the Danish book was sold out by the publishers Forlaget Borgen by Christmas last year, but a new edition is now being printed, priced at DKK 200.

From Top Hats to Wellingtons’, can be purchased from the Faculty library on Dyrlægevej, in the bookshop in the tower block (Højhuset), and in Café Væksthuset. Alternatively, if you contact me directly at , I will gladly supply a signed copy with a dedication. The book can, of course, also be ordered from bookshops throughout Denmark, and is even on sale at the National Museum in Copenhagen.

Kim Greiner, Senior Gardener