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
Buses in Portsmouth is served by National Express, which operates a number of routes to the city and currently provides twelve journeys per day between London and Portsmouth, offering journey times of around two hours. A competing service between the two cities was introduced by Megabus, a division of the Stagecoach Group, in February 2004. Further competition on the corridor appeared in September 2009, when Portsmouth and Southampton became the first destinations to be served by Greyhound UK, owned by FirstGroup; this service ceased in November 2012. Solent Blue Line operated a service linking Portsmouth to Southampton for four years from 2005. Prior