Portsmouth enrols 23,000 students and is ranked among the world's best modern universities. Portsmouth is also the birthplace of author Charles Dickens and engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Romans built Portus Adurni, a fort, at nearby Portchester in the late third century. The city's Old English name "Portesmuða" is derived from "port", meaning a haven, and "muða", the mouth of a large river or estuary. The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" has a warrior called Port and his two sons killing a noble Briton in Portsmouth in 501. Winston Churchill, in his "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples", says that Port was a pirate
Portsmouth theatrical troupe. In Patrick O'Brian's nautical historical Aubrey-Maturin series, Portsmouth is most often the port from which Captain Jack Aubrey's ships sail. Victorian novelist and historian Sir Walter Besant documented his childhood in the town in the 1840s in "By Celia's Arbour: A Tale of Portsmouth Town". The book is notable for its precise descriptions of the town before the defensive walls were removed. Southsea features in "The History of Mr Polly" by H. G. Wells under the fictional name of "Port Burdock", which he describes as "one of the three townships that are grouped around the Port Burdock naval