King's ransom

Many thanks to Ged Martin, professor of Canadian studies at Edinburgh University, for news of alumnus to be proud of No. 81, one Nicholas of Hungary.

He is pretty unchallengeably the oldest entrant in this series, having entered Oxford University in 1193 as, Dr Martin suggests, the first government-funded overseas student at a British university.

His stipend of five shillings a week, enough in those days to hire two servants, was soon increased. This has led some scholars to suggest that he was not a proper student at all, but possibly involved in negotiations to ransom Richard I, captured on the way home from the Crusades.

Others have suggested that he might not have been a Hungarian at all. He drops from the Oxford records in 1196, suggesting that he either graduated or simply lost his scholarship. He seems to have been one of Central Europe's first brain-drainers, becoming a priest at Chester Cathedral.