A tale of two cities and two traditions: sporting showdown defines academia's ancient rivalry

The intense rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge reaches its annual climax tomorrow when the calm of the Thames will be shattered by the plash of oars, the shouts of coxes and the whoops of quarter of a million people along the river banks as the boat-race crews battle against each other, the wind, the current and the tide to see which is the faster in a contest lasting barely 20 minutes.

The intense rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge reaches its annual climax tomorrow when the calm of the Thames will be shattered by the plash of oars, the shouts of coxes and the whoops of quarter of a million people along the river banks as the boat-race crews battle against each other, the wind, the current and the tide to see which is the faster in a contest lasting barely 20 minutes.

At the end, one crew celebrates glory and the other plunges to despair; until next year, when all will be repeated. Oxford and Cambridge have been at it, on and off, since 1829.

Ferocious competition between the universities has been the norm since a crackdown on antisocial behaviour by Oxford students in 1209 drove some to flee. Barely stopping at Northampton and Stamford, either of which might have become a university town, they sought the safety of the Fens and the protection of the Bishop of Ely in Cambridge. Since then, the institutions have vied with each other.

Oxford and Cambridge have a similar purpose: to promote learning and research, and to educate the young for the benefit of society. And they have continued to adapt as newer universities in Britain have taken their place alongside them. But Oxford and Cambridge continue to occupy a special place.

Every supporter of Oxford knows it is a serious city with close links to London, the Royal Court and Parliament. It was always a big place, thinking well of itself and taking pride in its metropolitan connections and its industrial activity. Cambridge is out of the way, perched on the edge of a flat and watery country, home of dissidents, and of Chivers jam and Unwins seeds, a market town along a sluggish river, which scholarly refugees came to dominate and to provide the main business.

Oxford has always claimed a higher profile, especially in affairs of church and state. Every university-educated prime minister of Britain since Churchill has been an Oxford graduate. But in the 20th century, Cambridge can claim only Balfour, Baldwin and Campbell-Bannerman.

Cambridge graduates have tended to be civil servants, lawyers, teachers and humbler professional people, powers behind the throne, less flamboyant than Oxford contemporaries perhaps, but quietly influential.

In matters ecclesiastical, both universities had a bloody reformation, but Cambridge was more puritanical in its theologies, resistant to the policies of Archbishop Laud in the 17th century. Oxford tended to be royalist in the Civil Wars; Cambridge had Oliver Cromwell as a favoured son.

The great stirring of religious conscience at the end of the 18th century, the revulsion at secularism, and dismay at the creeping authority of the state in church affairs in the next century found expression in Oxford in the agonising of John Henry Newman and the vigour of the Oxford Movement.

Cambridge ripped out fancy church furnishings and went back to basics with the preaching of Charles Simeon and Bible study and an interest in the Romanesque as the architecture for worship. But in modern times it is the academic stereotyping of the two universities that is the most striking. Oxford is for the humanities; Cambridge is for science. As one wit put it in 1905, there was but one university in England, Oxford, "with a scientific suburb, specifically designated Cambridge".

Cambridge was Newton's university, and without Newton where would mathematics be? Without mathematics where would be the language to unlock the secrets of the universe? Then came Darwin and evolution, and J J Thomson whose understanding of the electron made possible the modern world.

Oxford remained "so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene ... whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age ... Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names".

In the early 19th century, boat-racing was transformed from recreation for working watermen to a sport for students, and caught the public imagination. It is fun to play on this and even demonise, the differences between Oxford and Cambridge. What universities do best requires the most rigorous testing, and how splendid to see this fought out in an unforgiving contest. But the game is endless and whatever the result, rivalry begins afresh in a few hours.

Gordon Johnson is a historian and president of Wolfson College, Cambridge

OXFORD V CAMBRIDGE

By Sri Carmichael

Founded: At Oxford teaching went on from 1096. It is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Cambridge's founding date is put in the 12th or 13th century

Colleges: Oxford 39, Cambridge 31

Students: Oxford 17,664, 11,119 undergraduates; Cambridge more than 16,500, including 11,600 undergraduates

Staff: Oxford, 7,675; Cambridge about 8,000

Famous alumni: Oxford: Sir Thomas More, Adam Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley, T.S.Eliot, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher. Cambridge: Charles Darwin, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Siegfried Sassoon, CS Lewis, Stephen Hawking, John Cleese