The MA is only rarely awarded as an Honorary Degree and such conferrals reflect outstanding service to the University or to the City of Cambridge.
One of the most successful stories in the modern history of ELT publishing started quietly. In 1985, Cambridge University Press published an unassuming new grammar by an equally unassuming teacher. Over the course of the next quarter century, the grammar and its writer went on to completely transform the world of ELT, and millions of lives with it.
Ray Murphy’s seminal works English Grammar in Use and Essential Grammar in Use have, in 27 years, notched up the following statistics:
•More than 100 million students have used his books to improve their English
•Almost all non-native speakers of English will have used, or know of, his books
•Westminster borough in London recently named English Grammar in Use as one of the most borrowed titles from its libraries, beating authors like J K Rowling
Plymouth-born Murphy (pictured left, with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz)) started his professional life as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher in 1971. It was the materials he prepared for his students that were to go on to become the basis for the two best-selling grammars of all time. After teaching English for 17 years in the UK and Germany, Murphy quit the profession in 1989 to concentrate full-time on writing.
Image credit: University of Cambridge
Reproduced courtesy University of Cambridge