TS Eliot legacy helps secure English teaching at Newnham College

A new English teaching fund worth £1.125 million has been established at Newnham College, Cambridge thanks to one of the world's best-loved and most successful musicals - Cats. The fund has been set up with a generous donation by Valerie Eliot, editor, publisher and wife of the late Nobel Prize-winning poet T. S. Eliot. She has been an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College for the past 20 years. Valerie Eliot was instrumental in encouraging Andrew Lloyd Webber to transform T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats from a beloved collection of poems into a record-breaking musical that enchanted audiences worldwide for 21 years. Welcoming the news, Newnham College Principal Dame Patricia Hodgson said: "Newnham College is enormously grateful to Valerie Eliot for this generous gift.