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
New Theatre Royal literary success and long after its publication. He is known to have performed in Portsmouth later but at St Peter's Hall. Sadly, he did not perform at the current theatre and there is no evidence of his visiting it though it is possible. In the same year the old theatre was demolished, Mr Henry Rutley opened a new venue on the present site. Rutley (born Newcastle 1816) was an impresario and circus proprietor who had arrived in Portsmouth in 1854 and purchased the Swan Tavern in Commercial Road and the adjoining Landport Hall, a raquet court. He converted the hall