CAM 68

Cambridge Alumni Magazine Issue 68 Lent 2013

In this issue:

Secret Cambridge Oxbridge, Camford Neighbours Man vs robot Hamilton Kerr

CAM/68

Contents

CAM Cambridge Alumni Magazine Issue 68 Lent Term 2013

Marcus Ginns

Regulars Letters Don’s diary Update Diary My room, your room The best...

Secret Cambridge

Extracurricular University matters My Cambridge Reading list Cambridge soundtrack 10 A sporting life 11 Prize crossword 12 02 03 04 08

41 42 44 45 47 48

Features

26

Marcus Ginns

47

Good neighbours

14

Whether you live in a street or on a college staircase, good relations with the neighbours are essential.

Dr Emily Cockayne explores an intriguing history.

Oxbridge (and Camford)

18

Loved by newspaper columnists and politicians alike, William Ham Bevan uncovers the secret history of Oxbridge.

Lara Harwood

Man vs robot

14 The opinions expressed in CAM are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the University of Cambridge.

Professor Huw Price argues that artificial intelligence poses a real and existential threat.

Editor Mira Katbamna Managing Editor Morven Knowles Design and Art Direction Smith smithltd.co.uk Print Pindar Publisher The University of Cambridge Development Office 1 Quayside Bridge Street Cambridge CB5 8AB Tel +44 (0)1223 332288

This publication contains paper manufactured

by Chain-of-Custody certified suppliers operating within internationally recognised environmental standards in order to ensure sustainable sourcing and production.

Editorial enquiries Tel +44 (0)1223 760149 cameditor@alumni.cam.ac.uk

Alumni enquiries Tel +44 (0)1223 760149 contact@alumni.cam.ac.uk alumni.cam.ac.uk facebook.com/ cambridgealumni @CARO1209 #cammag

A detail from St. John’s, Cambridge (by Fred Taylor) is used on page 19.

Advertising enquiries Tel +44 (0)20 7520 9474 landmark@lps.co.uk Services offered by advertisers are not specifically endorsed by the editor or the University of Cambridge. The publisher reserves the right to decline or withdraw advertisements.

Copyright © 2013 The University of Cambridge.

© NRM / Science & Society Picture Library.

CAM is published three times a year, in the Lent, Easter and Michaelmas terms and is sent free to Cambridge alumni.

It is available to non-alumni on subscription. For further information contact the Alumni Relations Office.

22

Scratching the surface The Hamilton Kerr Institute is one of the world’s leading centres for the conservation of easel paintings.

Becky Allen takes a tour.

A physician’s library Cover: Christine Slottved Kimbriel restoring “Christian Charity”

by Luca Giordano (private collection) at the Hamilton Kerr Institute.

Photograph by Marcus Ginns.

26

32

The first medical scrolls were used by priests and kings; now doctors – and patients – go online. Lucy Jolin examines the changing role of the medic’s textbook.

CAM 68 01

EDITOR’S LETTER

Your letters

Artificial intelligence

W

elcome to the Lent edition of CAM. No one forgets their College neighbours. Whether they end up lifelong friends or just feature in an anecdote about a missing piece of cheddar, neighbours form the heart of student life (K Block, Harvey Court, 1995 – I remember you all with fondness). So it is perhaps no surprise that when historian Emily Cockayne started to investigate the history of neighbourliness in Cambridge, she hit on such a rich seam. You can read about why corridor neighbours were as essential in 1800 as they are today on page 14.

Could undergraduates of the future have robots for neighbours? It’s hard to imagine, but Huw Price, the new Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, says that when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) we underestimate technology at our peril.

On page 22, he discusses the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and why the implications of AI need to be carefully considered.

Did you attend Oxbridge? I can’t say I know anyone who did, yet the word appears with remarkable regularity. On page 18, CAM takes a long, hard look at the etymology of the word, and why it holds such power.

Finally, on page 26 we visit the Hamilton Kerr Institute – a magical place where a painting can be restored, recovered or even transformed through scholarship and skill into an entirely different work of art.

Mira Katbamna (Caius 1995)

02 CAM 68

chuffed by this until they discovered that argon translates as lazy!

David Comins (Downing 1971)

Of man born

The name game If Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, wanted to call it “George” because he “needed a job and the King would have loved to have had a planet named after him”, then good for him. Unlike many of his rival astronomers, he had no private income and spent the daylight hours playing and teaching music, regularly giving eight hour-long lessons a day.

Luckily, King George III agreed and appointed him the King’s Personal Astronomer on a salary of £200 per annum, remarking that “Herschel should not sacrifice his valuable time to crotchets and quavers”.

Adrian Bradbury (Churchill 1985) I am reminded of a story that Dr Peter Armitt, a colleague of mine at The Glasgow Academy, used to tell his pupils concerning Sir William Ramsay, a former pupil of the school and 1904 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry following his work on the Noble Gases. Peter’s story suggests that Sir William named krypton as it was “hidden”, xenon as it was “foreign” or “strange”, neon as it was “new” but that he named argon after the pupils at his old school. Peter’s pupils were quite

As a Cambridge alumnus and a transgender man, I would like to thank you for including such an insightful and well-written article about Dr Jens Scherpe’s research.

One of the most striking things I’ve been confronted by during my own gender transition has been the sheer scope and depth of ignorance that exists within British society about both trans people specifically and issues of gender in general.

It is, then, vitally important that we foster greater knowledge and understanding of these issues.

I welcome this article with open arms and heartily applaud both Dr Scherpe and CAM magazine for taking such a positive step towards opening alumni minds.

Felix Clarke (Jesus 1996) Just to let you know we’re paying attention at the back: are there really 700,000,000 people worldwide affected by gender issues? If that is so, I am surprised; and if they are 0.1% of the population, the Earth is more densely populated than I had imagined. Should I be allowed to marry my deceased brother’s sister? Well, since she would be my sister as well, I think the answer is that people would probably disapprove.

Adrian Williams (Peterhouse 1957) With shame, we must admit to both these errors – as you rightly point out, we should have printed “70 million” and “brother’s wife”.

But we’re very glad indeed that you’re paying attention – Editor.

We are always delighted to receive your emails and letters.

Email your letters to: cameditor@alumni.cam.ac.uk

Don’s Diary

Write to us at: CAM, Cambridge Alumni Relations Office, 1 Quayside, Bridge Street, Cambridge, CB5 8AB. Please mark your letter ‘for publication’.

You can read more CAM letters at alumni.cam.ac.uk/cam.

Letters may be edited for length.

Hot metal What a great article on the pre-digital era of news publishing. Oh, how it took me back. I came up in 1966 and joined Varsity as a photographer.

I enjoyed it so much I nearly failed my Part I. There was also a serious side. One night, one of the reporters and I drove to a disused airfield in Hertfordshire where families were being housed by the local authority in virtually derelict barracks.

That story was sent to one of the nationals and made a big splash.

It came at about the same time as the broadcast of Cathy Come Home and I like to think we played a small part in the change in social attitudes to homelessness that followed.

Howard Gannaway (King’s 1966) I was fascinated to read Hot Metal, which revived many memories.

I joined Varsity in 1966 as a photographer and my main recollection is of the darkroom. The whole room stank of spent photographic hypo, no doubt spilt on the wooden floor. I doubt that the smell has gone yet, and pity the present occupier of the room!

Paul Ambler (Clare 1965) The printers at Bury St Edmunds treated Varsity staff politely but firmly. On 3 November 1962 we led with the story that, for the third time that year, a Cambridge scientist had won a Nobel Prize. I checked the finished front page and we left. That night, the papers arrived and we saw that the father of the chapel had corrected the typo in the headline.

In gothic bold type it read “THREE NOBLE SCIENTISTS”.

Colin Morris (Trinity 1961) It was slightly ironic that one of the first CAM articles I read, having downloaded the CAM Reader App for my iPad, was entitled Hot Metal!

Keep up the good work.

Dr Tony Bell (Wolfson 1995)

Dr Tiffany Bergin is the Sutasoma Research Fellow and Director of Studies for Politics, Psychology and Sociology at Lucy Cavendish

I spent much of Michaelmas Term pondering the significance of a major anniversary. Forty years ago, in the autumn of 1972, three male Colleges – King’s, Churchill and Clare – admitted female undergraduates for the first time, and my own College, Lucy Cavendish, started to take undergraduates.

In some ways, 1972 marks the beginning of women moving into all areas of University life, a change made possible by the work that had already been done at Girton, Newnham and what was then New Hall. And so it was a great honour to be invited, along with colleagues and many of the 1972 alumnae, to celebrate the contribution women have made to Cambridge at a gala event comprising a tea at Clare, a concert in King’s College Chapel and a dinner.

A particular highlight for me was hearing the stories of alumnae from those years, many of whom have gone on to achieve great success in their careers. The composer Judith Weir (King’s 1973) and the cookery writer Tamasin Day-Lewis (King’s 1973) were among those first undergraduates. Fittingly, both contributed to the celebrations, with a performance of Weir’s piece little tree and a gala dinner menu by Day-Lewis (cleverly designed to remind diners of the 1970s).

Speaking after dinner, the Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz reminded us that, despite the huge progress made since 1972, work still needs to be done. Even today, only 26.8% of academic staff and 15.6% of professors at Cambridge are women – a sobering thought.

The desire to increase the number of female students and scholars at Cambridge, as well as the resources available to them, helped spur the founding of Lucy Cavendish, where I am proud to serve as a director of studies. It is the only mature women’s College in the country and our undergraduates range in age from 21 to over 60.

In the sociology supervisions I lead, students often draw upon their previous experiences working in business, government, social services and many other fields as we discuss the relevance of classic texts. Such experiences help inform our fascinating debates; indeed, my biggest challenge so far has been ending supervisions on time, as the students and I rarely want to end our discussions!

It takes great determination to apply to university as a mature student. As I have got to know my students and heard about their varied and sometimes challenging paths to Cambridge, my admiration for them and for my College has

only grown. With their determination, I have no doubt they will go on to achievements no less brilliant than those of the 1972 alumnae whom I met at the gala event. It’s a teaching cliché, but I have learned almost as much from my students as they have learned from me.

Happily, Lucy Cavendish’s fellows are just as diverse as its student body. One of the great pleasures of life at all the University’s Colleges is the opportunity to meet people outside of your own discipline. I met Emanuela Orlando, the Isaac Newton-Dorothy Emmet Research Fellow in Environmental Law – an area as far from PPS as you could imagine – when we were assigned a shared College office. Together we are embarking on an interdisciplinary research project, one of the first to bring together law and criminology in the environmental field, investigating the prevention of environmental crimes.

Environmental crimes include trade in endangered species, illegal dumping of waste and illegal logging, which cost societies around the world billions each year, according to United Nations calculations. In September 2012, Emanuela and I organised a conference, sponsored

by The Modern Law Review, to bring together legal scholars and criminologists as well as practitioners from the European Commission, the UK Environment Agency and NGOs. The conference at Lucy Cavendish highlighted clear ways in which criminological research could contribute to the design of environmental law and also provided a launching pad for the future interdisciplinary research that is urgently needed in this area.

We hope this work will impact on how environmental crimes are prosecuted, but it has also had a very positive impact on our own individual research – research we might not have been able to pursue had it not been for the determination of the women who have gone before us. We are very grateful to the women of 1972, and of Girton, Newnham and New Hall, who helped open the doors to the opportunities that are now available to us. We hope and expect that their legacy will endure, and that in the coming decades women will achieve ever greater levels of participation in all aspects of University life.

A second 1972 event will take place at Churchill and Lucy Cavendish on 20 April 2013. For more information, please visit 1972cambridge.co.uk.

CAM 68 03

UPDATE LENT TERM

19 72 WOMEN’S EDUCATION

A year to celebrate Forty years ago, women’s education at Cambridge took a leap forward. Female undergraduates were admitted for the first time to Clare, King’s, Churchill and Lucy Cavendish, extending the path first pioneered by female students 100 years earlier at Girton (1869) Newnham (1871) and New Hall (1954), now Murray Edwards. This academic year, the anniversary is being marked with a series of special events.

The first celebration took place on 17 November, with a tea at Clare College and a concert and gala dinner at King’s. More than 400 members of all four Colleges were welcomed back to Cambridge for the event, and were addressed by the Vice-Chancellor.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz said: “I am delighted to have this opportunity to celebrate not only the landmark year of 1972, but also this collaboration between four very different Colleges which has brought tremendous dividends: an example of Collegiate Cambridge at its best.”

A second event – the Conversation – will take place at Churchill and Lucy Cavendish on 20 April.

1972cambridge.co.uk

04 CAM 68

MUSEUMS

Poets in residence

T

en leading poets have taken up residencies in the University as part of Thresholds, a project curated by Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate. The writers are based in museums, galleries and collections throughout the University including the Fitzwilliam, the Botanic Garden and Kettle’s Yard.

During their spring residency, the poets will meet with researchers and staff, and draw inspiration from the collections – which include artefacts such as Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s farewell letter to his wife at the Polar Museum and Isaac Newton’s copy of the Principia Mathematica at the University Library.

The poets taking part are Sean Borodale, Gillian Clarke, Imtiaz Dharker, Ann Gray, Matthew Hollis, Jackie Kay, Daljit Nagra, Don Paterson, Jo Shapcott and Owen Sheers. Each has been commissioned to write a poem

Carol Ann Duffy

inspired by the materials and exhibits at their disposal.

Thresholds also aims to bring in young people from areas of low cultural engagement to explore the University collections and develop their writing skills. The poets will work with around 150 pupils at nearby schools, and the initiative is supported by Arts Council England, Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council in partnership with the University.

Duffy said: “This is a stunning level of commitment to poetry and poets.

These 10 residencies will create a unique collaboration of poets, creating a meeting of minds and disciplines and providing a catalyst for ideas. They will be renaissance poets for Cambridge in the truest sense. This really is an unprecedented initiative, and very exciting for everyone involved – myself, the poets and the University.”

UPDATE LENT TERM

New Year Honours Three Cambridge academics were named in the New Year Honours list. Professor Frank Kelly, Master of Christ’s College, was appointed CBE for services to mathematical sciences. Professor Mary Beard of Newnham College was awarded an OBE for services to Classical scholarship, and Professor Janet Todd, President of Lucy Cavendish College, received the same award for services to higher education and literary scholarship.

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Extreme Unction, 1638-1640 © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Plant Sciences Dr Beverley Glover has been named director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

She will take up the post, and the associated chair in Plant Systematics and Evolution, in July. Dr Ottoline Leyser has been appointed Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, established in 2011 to investigate the regulatory systems underlying plant growth and development.

RESEARCH

Graphene Centre Graphene is a true wonder material: a one-atomthick layer of carbon that’s exceptionally strong, lightweight and flexible and which can function as a transparent electrical conductor. A new research centre at Cambridge is now aiming to harness its potential, taking it from the laboratory to a range of real-life applications including storage batteries and wearable electronics.

Funded by a £12m government grant, the Cambridge Graphene Centre will first look into ways of producing the material on an industrial scale. Its director, Professor Andrea Ferrari, said: “We are targeting applications and manufacturing processes. These new materials could bring a new dimension to future technologies, creating faster, thinner, stronger and more flexible broadband devices.”

ART

Fitzwilliam Museum saves Poussin for nation

T

he Fitzwilliam Museum has succeeded in its bid to save a masterpiece by Nicolas Poussin for the nation.

Extreme Unction, painted around 1638, was made available to the Museum for just under £3.9m – far less

than its market value of £14m – thanks to the Government’s Acceptance-in-Lieu Scheme. The painting, one of a series depicting the sacraments of the Catholic Church, is to be displayed as part of the museum’s permanent collection.

David Scrase, the Fitzwilliam’s Acting Director, said: “We are extremely grateful to the thousands of individuals and the many charities and organisations that have given so generously to this campaign. Now this masterpiece will be available to all, transforming our existing collections at the Fitzwilliam.”

fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can now download the free CAM Reader App from Apple’s App Store – giving access to all content from recent editions of the magazine on your device.

You can bookmark your current page, and send pages to a printer if you prefer to read them on paper – a boon for the crossword!

Get the CAM Reader app from the iOS App Store or via iTunes. An iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 4.0 or later is required.

CAM 68 05

06 CAM 67

UPDATE LENT TERM

CAMCard discount at Heffers The Heffers’ Cambridge alumni discount is 15% – a perfect incentive to go on a book splurge. Shop in person with your CAMCard at Trinity Street or online at alumni.cam.ac.uk /benefits/camcard/bookshops.

CARO E: contact@alumni.cam.ac.uk T: +44 (0)1223 332288 W: alumni.cam.ac.uk

New Heads of House Rowan Williams, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, has been installed as Master of Magdalene, and Professor Dame Carol Black has taken office as Principal of Newnham. Homerton has elected Professor Geoffrey Ward as its next Principal, Downing has elected Professor Geoffrey Grimmett as the next Master and Michael Proctor is Provost-elect of King’s. All three will take up their posts in October.

University Enterprise Fund Last year, alumni and friends played a vital role in turning Cambridge innovation into commercial success, through the University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund. Now there’s a second chance to support new companies harnessing University research – and there are generous tax incentives to get involved.

The new fund, classed as a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), aims to raise £1m in the 2013-14 tax year.

“The response from alumni last year was outstanding,” said Dr Anne Dobrée, Head of Seed Funds at Cambridge Enterprise.

“Programmes such as this enable young companies to grow and contribute to the continued success of the Cambridge Cluster.” enterprise.cam.ac.uk

New Groups Wherever you are in the world, local alumni groups offer the chance to network, socialise and make new friends. Among the newest additions are three groups that welcome graduates of both Oxford and Cambridge.

In Malta, you can email Dr Edward Dalmas (Wolfson 2007), edward.m.dalmas@gmail.com, and in Peru contact Ana Maria Huaita Alfaro (Wolfson 2009), amhuaita@gmail.com. Tri Bui (Downing 2003) runs the new group in Vietnam – contact him at buitri84@gmail.com.

There’s also a new shared-interest group, the Cambridge Alumni Energy Society.

Contact Antoine Huard (Queens’ 2010) at antoine.huard@cantab.net. alumni.cam.ac.uk/groups

TRAVEL PROGRAMME

Discover the world with Cambridge

T

he Cambridge Alumni Travel Programme offers a unique chance to see the world’s wonders accompanied by trip scholars who are top experts in their field.

Among this summer’s destinations are the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in the company of Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, and a trip to Herculaneum joined by eminent classicist Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill. Other upcoming trips include the Galapagos Islands, Indonesia, the Himalayas and Rome. It’s a great opportunity to meet like-minded alumni of Cambridge (and Oxford) and to support the University, which receives part of the revenue from each booking.

Request a brochure by emailing contact@alumni.cam.ac.uk or visit alumni.cam.ac.uk/travel

CAM 68 07

DIARY

LENT TERM

Global Cambridge: Singapore 7 April 2013 InterContinental Hotel, 80 Middle Road, Singapore.

Join us in one of the most dynamic places on earth to investigate two of the key issues facing governments across the globe: public health and finance.

To discuss these key challenges, Cambridge experts, Professor Martin Daunton, Dr Simon Taylor, Professor Dame Carol Black and Dr Jennifer Barnes will join the Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz to discuss history and the financial crisis, what the future holds for global finance and what lessons can be learnt from the Singaporean healthcare system.

alumni.cam.ac.uk/events

08 CAM 68

The afternoon academic programme will be followed by an evening reception hosted by the Cambridge Society of Singapore, giving you the chance to debate and discuss the points raised during the day with fellow alumni.

The conference will take place at the InterContinental Hotel, 80 Middle Road, Singapore, and tickets cost ÂŁ50 or SGD 97.87. For more details and to book, visit the website.

Events with the Vice-Chancellor will also take place in Melbourne, Australia on 12 April and in Hong Kong on 17 April.

DIARY LENT TERM

Other events

Festivals

Bo Lundberg

Cambridge at the Hay Festival 23 May – 2 June 2013

Cambridge is back by popular demand at the Hay Festival this May. As well as lectures from experts including Tim Minshall, Barbara Sahakian, Simon Blackburn and Tony Badger, there will be an opportunity to attend an exclusive event with speakers and alumni in Hay-on-Wye. The festival runs from 23 May to 2 June. alumni.cam.ac.uk/events

Lucinda Rogers

Quentin Blake: Drawn by Hand

12 February – 12 May Cambridge Quentin Blake is one of the bestknown illustrators of his generation. This exhibition at the Fitzwilliam brings together work from the past 10 years, including etchings, lithographs and book illustrations. fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Henley Boat Races 24 March Henley-on-Thames

Founded in 1975, the Henley Boat Races take place each spring on the Thames. Join fellow enthusiasts to cheer on the Light Blues from the riverbank. cubc.org.uk

BNY Mellon Boat Race 31 March London

CARO events E: events@alumni.cam.ac.uk T: +44 (0)1223 332288 W: alumni.cam.ac.uk

It’s the big one: the 159th Boat Race. First raced in 1829, the Boat Race is one of the oldest sporting events in the world. cubc.org.uk

Endellion String Quartet

8 May West Road Concert Hall Cambridge Celebrating its 21st season in residence at the University, the Endellion’s final concert of the academic year will take place at the West Road Concert Hall. Music will include Haydn’s Opus 50 Prussian Quartet and Bartók’s First Quartet. Booking is recommended. westroad.org

Varsity Cricket 15 June London

When Paddy Sadler leads the Light Blues into battle with the old enemy at Lord’s this summer, Cambridge will be going for a fourth successive one-day victory. Cambridge women will also play on 15 June, taking on Oxford at the Nursery Ground.

Full details are available online, including travel and hospitality packages for students and alumni. lords.org

Save the date!

Alumni Festival 2013 27–29 September

CAM 68 09

MY ROOM, YOUR ROOM ROOM 6, 23 WEST ROAD, SELWYN

Words Lucy Jolin Photograph Marcus Ginns Robert Harris (Selwyn 1975) is the author of Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has worked on BBC programmes such as Panorama and Newsnight and for newspapers such as the Sunday Times. His novels have sold more than 10 million copies.

10 CAM 68

Rumbi Makanga is a second-year land economist who, like Harris, is addicted to buying books. “I leave all my books at home so I have to buy new books to fill up my bookcase. My mum visits and says, ‘You’ve been buying books again!’ But I really can’t help it.”

“

W

e all gathered here to watch the Frost-Nixon interviews because I had the only TV in the building,” remembers Robert Harris, standing in the tranquil, light-filled surroundings of Room 6, 23 West Road. “I remember hanging out of the window with the aerial.”

The television was not, he hastens to add, a perk of the room. “I knew I wanted to be a journalist and at the time, National Union of Journalist (NUJ) rules were very strict. If you wanted to work in London, you had to work on the Financial Times or at the BBC. Otherwise, if you wanted to be a journalist, you had to start in the provinces. I was born and bred in Nottingham. I’d had my fill of the provinces, and I had no interest in finance. So I rented a TV so I could see what was going on at the BBC.” Sadly, those raucous gatherings (which involved, at various times, a future senior Conservative MP and a future top advertising executive) are no more, thanks to the TV room downstairs. “Though my friends did come back here for my birthday, which was really nice,” says Rumbi Makanga, the room’s current

Our music was on enormous reel-to-reel magnetic-tape recorders, with Elton John and Cat Stevens.

The best...bookshop inCambridge Henrietta Kelly is reading History of Art at Trinity Hall It is a truth universally acknowledged that Cambridge students love books.

Nowhere else have I heard people so vehemently defend their favourite book or speak with such passion about reading rooms. But when days buried in the pages of the latest reading list melt into weeks, even the most dedicated bibliophile can start to feel weary. And that’s when it’s time to visit the Haunted Bookshop.

Hidden just off King’s Parade and dwarfed by surrounding buildings, this unassuming shop is easy to bypass. Step inside and inhale deeply, and you may just detect the aroma of sweet violets, the perfume worn by the ghostly figure said to guard the stock at this most unusual of bookshops.

Be prepared: this is no Waterstones. Specialising in children’s and illustrated books, the shop was taken over by its current owner in 1994 and has remained unaltered for decades. The minuscule space is lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases that spill their contents onto a faded red carpet.

At the top of a narrow staircase is another room of ramshackle shelves, with books heaped precariously and crammed into cardboard crates.

Just visible among this haphazard

arrangement is an ornate mantelpiece, a reminder that the building was once student accommodation.

In the corner hangs a sign warning thieves that they will be – rather unconventionally – castrated.

The best time to visit? Dusk.

Then, as the light fails, a mysterious woman clad in white has been spotted scaling the stairs. I like to think she was a guest at an undergraduate party and had such a good night that she just can’t keep away.

But even in the daytime, the place has an unnerving atmosphere.

In dark corners the temperature seems to drop dramatically. Odd playthings adorn the walls: a toy acrobat, a glow-in-the-dark skeleton, a voodoo doll. But despite this, the bookshop is not a scary place.

How could it be when childhood comforts such as Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Rabbit and the Famous Five adorn its shelves?

And perhaps it is these lost delights, rather than its ghoulish history, that make up the Haunted Bookshop’s real pleasure. As in childhood, I have lost whole afternoons wandering among its stacks.

I invariably leave with some new curiosity, and my love of books firmly restored.

Marcus Ginns

occupant. “But we just don’t do drunk antics. I think Robert’s generation were far worse for that, whatever the Daily Mail says!”

Her laptop sits on the bookshelf by the window where Harris’s TV (“which would be a museum piece now,” he says) was once positioned. There’s no need to risk her life hanging out of the window to make it work, either. “Although we do complain that the Wi-Fi is slow and doesn’t cover everywhere,” she says with a grin.

“And that’s the biggest change – technology,” says Harris. “Our music was on enormous reel-to-reel magnetic-tape recorders, with Elton John and Cat Stevens. I used to have to find a phone box to call my parents on a Sunday evening. But I think that gave us more independence as students. You weren’t being hassled by texts. You were more on your own.”

Being allocated one of the largest rooms wasn’t an accident, says Harris, who read English and lived in “a garret room” on the second floor during his first year.

“I was editing what was then called Stop Press [now Varsity] when the allocations for second-year rooms came up. So I swung a line – I knew about this room and I could say that I needed the space to hold editorial meetings. I was here for two years. I loved the space, the big windows and the high ceiling.”

Makanga is originally from Zimbabwe and says she likes to surround herself with things that remind her of home. “I have a little Zimbabwe table, with ornaments that I’ve picked up. I also have my jewellery out on display. I like having it out as it cheers me up.

It reminds me of formal events when you have to dress up, as it can get a bit depressing just working.”

Harris says he was rather less organised. “All I remember having in the room was books – I still have them all. A lot of people used to take books out of the library but I liked to buy them. I used to make shelves for them out of planks and bricks.”

He and Makanga agree that what you have in your room doesn’t matter – it’s what you take away that counts. “Though I always leave my hangers,” says Makanga. “When you come to university you never have enough.”

“There’s nothing that was in my room then that I feel I’d like to pass on,” says Harris. “Student rooms are temporary. You take everything with you, like a snail. And I don’t think you leave anything behind.”

Nonetheless, Room 6 has nothing but good memories for him. “I was the first in my family to go to university,” he says. “And because of that, I sensed that coming here was playing with the casino’s money, and there was nothing to lose. Cambridge, for me, was the gateway to the world.”

CAM 68 11

SECRET CAMB RI DG E

Murder most foul Words Becky Allen Photograph Steve Bond

L

ook carefully and you will see it: a small, black door set into the grey brick and stone of St John’s, flanked by mooring rings and often partly submerged in the waters of the Cam. Empty beer bottles occasionally appear on its narrow step, left by enthusiastic punters. Guides tell tourists the door was handy for catching swans for high table, that it was used for offloading goods from barges, or that it was part of a 1960s prank in which students reoriented fire-escape signs, set off the alarms and sent fleeing freshers hurtling into the river. But in truth, the door opens onto an altogether murkier past.

Small clues exist in St John’s archives. Victorian plans, inked on thick paper and delicately washed with colour, show that the corridor behind the door led to eight undergraduate “bogs” and three fellows’ WCs. The 1875 drawings mention “bins for daily supply of dry earth”.

On the construction of the present door to the river, they state: “Here make an exit doorway to barge – dry earth to be taken across in dustmen’s barges once in two weeks.

Earth manure to be removed daily.”

Guides tell tourists the door was handy for catching swans for high table, but in truth the door opens onto an altogether murkier past.

Johnians had one of their own – Henry Moule – to thank for this innovation. Graduating in 1821, he went on to become vicar of Fordington, Devon. Following the “Great Stink” of 1858, when the Thames seethed with sewage, he grew increasingly concerned about sanitation and disease.

In 1860, Moule patented the first mechanical earth closet, thus preventing the dumping of waste directly into the river.

Sadly, the closets’ impact on the Cam seemed minimal. In the Cambridge Review of 1884, student and aspiring oarsman RC Lehmann wrote: “I visited the river with a crowd of other freshmen, enthusiastic like myself, and like me, arrayed in the fresh glory of the boating uniform. To many of us, that first visit was also the last.

Those who fell away declared they had not come to Cambridge to spend their leisure time in helping to stir up an open sewer.”

The following year, Charles Taylor, Master of St John’s, received an angry note from alumnus WL Wilson: “I was at dear old St John’s yesterday, and was not merely horrified, I was positively disgusted and made almost sick when I looked through our beautiful covered bridge into the river beneath... our Johnian drainage is a disgrace to the College.”

In 1897, St John’s replaced Moule’s invention with water closets, a vast plumbing project that took 50 men six months to complete. According to the work’s Sewage Diary, kept by the college’s larger-than-life Junior Bursar, William Heitland, the refurbished Third Court conveniences comprised bay wood seats over “Doulton’s improved open trough latrines closet in salt glazed stoneware” for undergraduates’ rears, and Doulton Queensware WCs with “polished mahogany hinged seats” for fellows.

But it was the construction of a pumping station on the banks of the Cam in 1895 that had the greatest impact on Cambridge’s sewerage. Powered by steam produced by burning residents’ rubbish, it pumped sewage through two miles of cast-iron pipes to Milton, where it was treated and used as manure.

Within a decade of its construction, Cambridge’s death rate fell by 15%, says local historian and former street cleaner Allan Brigham. “When I stand on Castle Hill and look over Cambridge, the most significant thing I see is the chimney of the pumping station. It’s a more significant memorial to 19th-century engineering and the spirit of social reform than any other building,” he explains.

But the darkest chapter in the history of St John’s Third Court latrines is the small part they played in a grisly College death. Recounted by College historian Dr Peter Linehan in his story Unfinished Business, a trip to the latrines formed part of John Brinkley’s defence when in 1746 he was accused of murdering fellow student James Ashton. His throat had been cut – with a porcelain shard from a broken chamber pot.

CAM 68 13

A

lmost everyone has neighbours. They can enrich our lives – or, with disputes about noise or giant leylandii, become, in a thousand tabloid headlines, ‘neighbours from hell’.

But what is a good neighbour? Over the past nine centuries, ideas of neighbourliness have changed. Historically, poor neighbours living on streets and in courtyards were enmeshed in reciprocal networks of mutual support. They read and wrote for each other, they nursed the nearby sick, put fires out, lent money to each other and cared for the nippers next door. New neighbours could take some time to adjust to each other, but they often become involved in the lives of the people around them.

City dwellers today may complain that they “never see the neighbours” but in College staircases and corridors, the notion of neighbourliness – in all its myriad forms – is still strong. As freshers soon discover, living on a staircase is to live in a microcosm of neighbouring in wider society. Quickly adjusting your own behaviour and expectations to accommodate the lifestyles and sensitivities of the people who live nearby is one of the essential first lessons of coming up.

Shared facilities – from a cold tap to the coal box – often form a catalyst for neighbourliness. My PhD supervisor had rooms in Jesus College which shared a bathroom with the rooms on the other side of the staircase.

The bathroom had two doors into it, both of which could be locked from within.

Forgetting to lock the neighbour’s entrance when using the facilities held the potential for acute embarrassment. Forgetting to unlock the neighbour’s entrance on evacuating could strain relations.

Although that particular arrangement was odd even in Cambridge, historically households shared back-to-back privies and water closets. Nationally, the proportion of households lacking their own loo has dropped from 21% in 1951 to about 1% today, but many Cambridge students continue to share.

Sharing facilities means that neighbours routinely encounter one another.

In the wider world it was women who were most likely to meet and talk at communal pumps and around shared washing resources.

Women would pin out their laundry together in shared courts – literally “hanging out together”. Today, undergraduate neighbours offer similar care and support. They are, and were, surrogate family members as well as neighbours; friendships are formed over cups of cocoa and games, whether whist or Super Mario Brothers.

George Nugent Bankes, a student at King’s in the late 1800s, recorded his lively observations of College life in A Cambridge Staircase (1883) and reveals a fascination with and fondness for his neighbouring students.

Nugent Bankes thought it would be “exceedingly inconvenient to be on bad terms with the rest of one’s staircase”, and valued his neighbours as sources of “sugar, tea, or tobacco” – borrowing also being common among neigh-

THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR Whether you live in a street or on a college staircase, good relations with the neighbours are essential. Dr Emily Cockayne (Girton 1991) explores an intriguing history.

Illustration Lara Harwood

CAM 68 15

28 CAM 68 16 67

bours on streets at this time. The staircase neighbours became “a regular happy family”, cared for by “our common gyp and our common bedmaker”. At a time when neighbouring on streets was usually restricted to conversation on the doorstep, undergraduates on Nugent Bankes’ staircase often visited each other’s rooms.

Close living brought the danger that secrets could be uncovered. During the lifetime of John North, the late-17th century Master of Trinity, College living arrangements were fairly intimate: many students lived with their tutors, occupying truckle beds and studying in carrels off the main rooms. But even in the early 20th century, living cheek by jowl could produce an unlooked for intimacy.

One winter in Oxford, an Oriel undergraduate claimed to have overheard Lancelot Phelps, the fellow who lived below him, break the ice in his morning bath while uttering the mantra, “Be a man, Lancelot, be a man”.

Thin walls between neighbours provide a rich harvest for eavesdroppers.

One winter in Oxford, an undergraduate claimed to have overheard the fellow who lived below him break the ice in his morning bath while uttering the mantra, ‘Be a man, Lancelot, be a man’

More serious was the risk of disease and fire. Plague epidemics had seen Colleges close during the 17th century, and coughs and colds still circulate College corridors on a regular basis. In 1962, seven people on one Pembroke staircase were vaccinated after an undergraduate was suspected of contracting smallpox.

Neighbours along streets would heed proverbial wisdom to “look to thyself when thy neighbour’s house is on fire”, and staircase neighbours were also threatened by conflagration.

Until gas fires became more commonly used, many College rooms were warmed by open fires. It is surprising not how many fires broke out, but how few. One Trinity undergraduate returned to his rooms one winter’s day in 1914 to find them to be “thoroughly ablaze”, and the fire went on to gut several sets of rooms. Fifteen years later, four sets in the front court at Caius were burned out and another four were affected by water damage after an early morning fire.

Neighbouring holds another risk – the risk that new neighbours will have different lifestyles and antagonise each other. Staircases and corridors have always included a mix of people; these are places where a young undergraduate might have a room next to an elderly fellow. People in different stages of life can make difficult or remote neighbours. The rooms opposite Nugent Bankes were occupied by “a non-resident fellow” who used them so rarely “as to prevent us forming anything but the most distant acquaintanceship when we meet him on the staircase”.

Clashes are not inevitable: many people from very different backgrounds have become friends by dint of being College neighbours.

When Jasper Rootham came up to St John’s College in 1929 he noticed how living close together threw grammar-school and publicschool boys together. “Brilliantly articulate Indians” mixed for the first time on the staircases with “knobbly-kneed” rugby players from Giggleswick.

The arrival of female students in previously all-male environments caused fluster among the College heads and fellows, who feared outbreaks of carnal neighbourliness. In 1964, movements towards co-education were discussed in an editorial in The Times, pointing to fears about what would happen if male and female undergraduates were able to live “hugger mugger on the same staircase”.

Writing about her experiences at Girton in the late Sixties, then still a women’s College, Jane Ellison recalled “a steady troop of slipper-clad feet to the chocolate machine at the end of the corridor” and “tearful sessions in dressing gowns round the gas fire in the company of friends”. Cocoa was a late-night palliative to be enjoyed in company; a function it continues to perform to this day.

In the outside world, neighbourly assistance once mitigated the effects of poverty, squalor and disease, but after the mid-20th

century neighbours become less vital. More people owned their own things and less neighbourly borrowing occurred. Laundry was cleaned indoors and, increasingly, it was dried indoors too. At the same time, architectural developments improved privacy and cars extended geographic mobility. Old-fashioned, involved neighbouring declined; henceforth the key to good neighbouring was the ability to “keep oneself to oneself”.

In Cambridge, too, staircase and corridor relationships were beginning to change.

Bonds that used to last for several years because the students tended to stay in the same room were becoming more fleeting, as students started to move room every year, usually by ballot. From the mid-20th century, neighbouring in the outside world begins to decline, triggering loneliness on streets and in suburbs. In 1959, a spate of suicides prompted a senior University health officer to blame stress caused by high expectations – and to note that the College staircase could “lead to loneliness and encourage brooding”.

Neighbour nuisances are so common on our streets that the phrase “neighbours from hell” has passed into cliché. Today, institutional living and modern technology help neighbours to live more amicably together.

The Murray Edwards College handbook reminds the students that Colleges “are densely occupied spaces”, and asks them to modify their behaviour to avoid disturbing other people and invest in a set of headphones.

Helpfully, the handbook also gives guidance about how to deal with noise issues, by first approaching the noise-maker and trying to resolve things amicably. A couple of years ago, the students of Newnham were sent emails reminding them to be discreet in their night-time activities, following complaints to the student union about noises down corridors that “funnel sound”, and which were easily heard through thin walls.

In a hyper-mobile digital world, do corridor neighbours still knock on each others’ doors? They are more likely to first check the location of their neighbour by text, and leave a message on their Facebook wall rather than scribble a note to stick on their door.

On Facebook there is a page for ‘P Staircase, Christ’s College’, although at the time of writing, this had only one like. More successful is the closed Facebook group called ‘North Court Q Staircase’ which 20 residents of an Emmanuel staircase have signed up to.

Staircase neighbouring will always provide comfort for most and annoyance for some.

Some College neighbours will become friends for life. Twenty years ago, long before I ever saw him in outdoor clothing, I used to spot a neighbour on my college corridor in his slippers and dressing gown. I still see him in his slippers. Reader, I married him.

Dr Emily Cockayne is the author of Cheek

by Jowl: A History of Neighbours, published by The Bodley Head.

CAM 68 17

Oxbridge (andCamford): an etymological history

by William Ham Bevan

Images © Smith/Corbis/Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge/ The Stapleton Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library/National Railway Museum/ Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images/Martin Parr (Magnum)

I

18 CAM 68

T I S A W O R D B E L O V E D of journalists, coopted by crammers and essay mills, swatted around mercilessly by politicians and for the most part loathed by those to whom it refers. For a place that has no earthly existence, “Oxbridge” has quite a hold on the public imagination; and Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor is typical of many members of the two universities in his exasperation at the word’s popularity.

“We work closely together on many things, but we are not one institution,” says Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz. “Oxford and Cambridge have distinctive contributions to make, and fusing them in one term invariably masks the differences – and adds a wash of unnecessary negativity.”

What’s more, Oxbridge seldom means just “Oxford and/or Cambridge”. Few other words lug around so much semantic baggage. Recently, the term speaks most loudly of privilege (and indeed, one newspaper website has an entire section on “Oxbridge and elitism”). But unlike its American analogue, the Ivy League – which is a real athletic conference of eight north-eastern universities –

Oxbridge does not refer to any formal association between the two places.

Yet it is certainly no upstart word. The Oxford English Dictionary has Oxbridge’s earliest citation in 1849, in the first volume of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Pendennis – and according to James Clackson, University Reader in Comparative Philology, this places it in a select lexical group. “Even up until the 1960s and 1970s, there weren’t so many of these portmanteau words in use,” he says. “There are a few examples such as ‘brunch’ or ‘smog’ that were coined in around 1900 and have survived – and actually, we’ve got a good idea as to the very individuals who came up with these.

“But since the Sixties, there has been a rush of new words like this, and it has become one of the more productive ways of adding to the language.

We are used to this type of word formation, so now we have examples like ‘Brangelina’ for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. People are able to decode them more easily: when you hear something like ‘staycation’ or ‘Movember’, you pick it up and pass it on.”

In Pendennis, Thackeray does not use Oxbridge as a collective term for the two seats of learning, but as a fictional stand-in for one or the other. The titular hero attends St Boniface College in this familiar university town of “gownsmen going about, chapel bells clinking (bells in Oxbridge are ringing from morning-tide till evensong), towers and pinnacles rising calm and stately over the gables and antique house-roofs.”

The book also introduces Oxbridge’s rival.

Thackeray mentions the son of the College cook, who “took the highest honours in the other University of Camford”, and again this supplies the OED’s first citation of the word. But although Camford crops up sporadically over the next 150 years – perhaps most notably in HG Wells’ satirical sci-fi novels The Camford Visitation and The Holy Terror – it never achieved the currency of Oxbridge, and there are few examples of it used in the modern sense.

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fictional Oxbridges abound; and an oddity is also to be found in the pages of Hansard from 1886. Henry Seton-Karr, MP for St Helens, complains to the Secretary to the Treasury that the New University Club in St James’s had paid the

Post Office for the abbreviated telegraph address “Oxbridge” – and then found out that it had to add the words “care of” to telegrams, rendering the whole exercise useless.

But the next significant stage in the word’s journey does not arrive until 1929, with Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own, based on her series of lectures on “Women and Fiction” at Newnham and Girton Colleges. The first chapter introduces a fictional narrator, walking around the riverside of “Oxbridge”, enduring snubs from fellows and servants of the men’s Colleges, and comparing their grandeur with the grey drabness of “Fernham”, the women’s College in which she is staying.

In places, the way in which Woolf uses Oxbridge seems prescient of the modern concerns and attitudes that are bound up with the word.

Alison Hennegan, Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Trinity Hall, says: “She values very much the ambitions, aspirations and standards that Cambridge – or Oxbridge – espouses, and tries to transmit and pass on. The trouble is, something has gone wrong, or perhaps was never right, about who is allowed to share that dream. One sex doesn’t really have access to it, and also some men don’t have it, coming from too low an economic base.

“I don’t think that one is anachronistically foisting these views on her. Although her main prism for looking at the things that Oxbridge doesn’t do well is female exclusion, she genuinely does see in that scrutiny the same core anxieties that people might have now, fairly or unfairly.”

There are ample clues that the setting is a close facsimile of Cambridge – so why did Woolf disguise it with the word Oxbridge? Hennegan says: “I think she felt that although those of us at either Oxford or Cambridge might get cross about the two being rolled up together, that’s the privilege of an insider. To those outside the two universities, they’re the same. Her essay is about female exclusion from what’s best in university education, and that means both universities.

“So her thinking is, ‘Even if I’ve come to address two different women’s societies, one in Newnham and one in Girton, as the germ for this paper on women and fiction, it’s a bit accidental. I could just as easily have had an invitation from Lady Margaret Hall or Somerville in Oxford, and

CAM 68 19

everything I’m saying here would be just as relevant.’”

After A Room of One’s Own, it would still take the better part of two decades before Oxbridge settled into its current mode of usage.

“It gets more common after the Second World War because then you get the expansion of university education, so you get people distinguishing other types of degrees from Oxbridge degrees,” says James Clackson.

Throughout the immediate post-war years, Oxbridge is most frequently used in opposition to “redbrick” – originally a collective term for the six civic universities established in the early 20th century, and often used more liberally to include other new places of learning. Both terms were popularised in the works of “Bruce Truscot” – actually the pseudonym of Edgar Allison Peers, a professor of Hispanic Studies at Liverpool University.

His 1943 volume Redbrick University and its two sequels were hugely influential tracts about higher education, arguing forcefully that the ancient foundations should not be allowed to starve newer universities of resources.

Truscot’s true identity was not revealed until after his death in 1952, when The Times obituarist gauged it necessary to flag up his words as neologisms. He wrote that Peers had produced “some wise and powerful little volumes pleading for... a recognition of the potentialities of the modern universities. ‘Oxbridge’ and ‘Redbrick’ (to use his graphic barbarisms) each has its vital part to play in the scheme of education, and few can quarrel with his conclusions.”

Within a short time, though, Oxbridge had such currency that it was appearing in the newspaper of record without inverted commas. In a 1957 letter to the editor, the High Master of St Paul’s School notes that “it is now no longer possible for a boy – a good boy with three subjects at advanced level – to be sure of a place in an Oxbridge college.” A swift tally of newspaper citations suggests that its incidence has remained fairly stable ever since.

Other words to describe places of higher education have enjoyed less longevity, thanks to the many waves of institutions that have acceded to the title of “university”. “‘Redbrick’ became less useful as you had different types of universities appear,” says James Clackson. “People then talked of the newer ‘Plateglass’ Universities and so on, but then it became clear that you couldn’t clas-

20 CAM 68

Thackeray mentions the son of the College cook, who “took the highest honours in the other University of Camford”, and this supplies the OED’s first citation of the word

sify Redbrick as being one class above Plateglass – more recent foundations skipped over older institutions in the perceived top 20 or top 30 universities in the UK, so classification in terms of time was less useful.”

More recently, universities have built up formal alliances, such as the 1994 Group, Million+ and the Russell Group. But it is only the last of those – representing large, research-intensive universities, including Oxford and Cambridge – that has permeated beyond the education supplements into the main newspaper sections and common usage. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that many writers still feel the need to specify “Oxbridge and the Russell Group” or “the Russell Group, which includes Oxbridge”.

The past 20 years has also seen the rise of world university rankings – most of which place Imperial College and UCL alongside Oxford and Cambridge in a putative UK first division. And as Robert Lethbridge, the Master of Fitzwilliam College, has noted, mentions of Oxbridge in the mainstream media are now more associated with their cultural and historical similarities, rather than academic pre-eminence.

“What strikes me most is that whenever you see ‘Oxbridge’ mentioned in the media, and there’s a pictorial complement such as a photograph, it’s never of the modern Oxford or Cambridge,” he says. “You don’t see a science lab, or a new College such as Churchill or Fitzwilliam, or St Catherine’s in Oxford.

“Rather, Oxbridge in the public mind is iconic because of this image – this ‘stately home’ world we associate with Brideshead Revisited, or the picturesque backcloth to Inspector Morse or Chariots of Fire. And from there, you get to the sociological, ideological and political connotations. If you were to do an opinion poll of what people associate with the word Oxbridge, it would all be to do with this grandiloquent architecture, and the embedded privilege and elitism of earlier centuries.”

At present, “Oxbridge” may be loathed within the two universities themselves, but can the term be reclaimed, bleached of its overtones and even – at some point in the distant future – used with pride? Jane Chapman, Professor of Communications at Lincoln University and a Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, believes so.

“I think we have to accept that the word is well established within our culture, and is likely to

remain,” she says. “Therefore we have to reclaim it with alternative communication strategies that widen the concept: proactive PR to show that what we do is in the national and international interest.

“What I think is contradictory and two-faced is the use of Oxbridge in a pejorative sense, when it’s used to signify elitism, and then that’s misconstrued as meaning upper-class. Elitism itself can be given a positive connotation – in China, the Confucian educational philosophy reveres elitism.

We need to demonstrate how important we are to the future; but the problem is that good news is never really news.”

There is a loose end to tie up. Why was it that Oxbridge, rather than Camford, lodged in the public consciousness? “These portmanteaux normally follow the order of the words when they’re not blended together,” says Clackson, “and we generally don’t say ‘Cambridge and Oxford’ – we’ve always said ‘Oxford and Cambridge’.

That’s one way people can pick up what these new words mean when they are coined.”

Robert Lethbridge believes there may be more to it than that. “I think Oxbridge has that Home Counties, bucolic sound to it,” he says.

“It’s a much more resonant word than Camford.

“Lots of English place-names end in ‘-bridge’, and it helps conjure up this mythical place, with people playing cricket in the shadow of cathedrals – the same thing that was alluded to in the Olympic opening ceremony last year. It just sounds appropriate for this idea of an imaginary England that we cling to.”

CAM 68 21

Professor Huw Price argues that artificial intelligence poses a real and existential threat.

Words Lucy Jolin Photographs Marcus Ginns

CV 1975 Double honours degree in pure maths and philosophy at ANU

I

t would be nice to make sure that the University of Cambridge survives to celebrate its millennium,” says Huw Price, the new Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy. In the quiet, civilised surroundings of the Fellows’ Parlour at Trinity College, the kind of threat he is talking about – artificial intelligence (AI), developed to a point where it could threaten the survival of the human race – seems remote, even fantastical.

It’s the stuff of Terminator and Robocop, not real life.

But as Price points out, in an age where technology is evolving faster than ever before, it makes perfect sense to consider how it might affect us – not just in the 200 years until Cambridge celebrates its 1000th birthday, but way beyond that. That’s why Price is seeking to set up the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with Jaan Tallinn, one of the founders of Skype, and Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, a former Master of Trinity College and the current Astronomer Royal.

1981 PhD in philosophy, Cambridge (Darwin 1977) 1989 Joined the University of Sydney 1997 Personal Chair in Natural Metaphysics, University of Sydney 2001 Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Edinburgh University 2002 Establishes the Centre for Time at University of Sydney, becoming Challis Professor of Philosophy 2011 Appointed Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge

22 CAM 68

Man vs Robot

CAM 68 23

24 CAM 68

The Centre will be a place where scientists, philosophers and other interested parties can evaluate and investigate threats such as rogue AI and other potentially cataclysmic effects of human technology, and ask what we can do to steer ourselves away from them. “We just don’t know whether these ideas are going to turn out to be science fiction or reality,” says Price.

“Inevitably, some things will turn out to be novel in ways we did not predict.

“Predictions made in the past missed huge things, like the internet. Presumably that will be the case again. But given the potential of artificial intelligence, and in particular of technology that enables machines to think a lot faster than we do, the idea that some day it will have a huge impact on us does not seem to me to be very controversial – even if putting a date on it is.

“Still, if you think in terms of the age of the University, it’s going to be short compared to that. The odds that it will not have happened by the end of the next century are extremely low, in my view... unless something else gets us first, of course!

“You need to be extremely pessimistic about progress in AI and in brain science to think that these lines are not going to converge. To take comfort in the thought that these problems are hard, and that perhaps we won’t solve them, seems to me to be irresponsible. So it’s a bit of a concern that these issues are presently portrayed as a little flaky, and that most of the thinking about them is taking place outside academia.”

The original idea for the Centre was sparked when Price met Tallinn at a conference in Copenhagen in 2011. “We shared a taxi one evening,” Price recalls. “He told me of his concerns about AI and the future. He said that in his pessimistic moments he thought he was more likely to die from an AI accident than from cancer or heart disease. I was intrigued, and impressed by his commitment to doing something about it.

“We talked more a few weeks later, and it struck me that there might be a role for me as a catalyst between Jaan and his contacts, on the one hand, and Cambridge, on the other.

I already knew Martin [Rees] through philosophy of cosmology circles, and knew of his interest in existential risk. We organised for Jaan to visit Cambridge to deliver a public lecture, hosted by the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) and have been gathering a distinguished advisory panel, both in Cambridge and elsewhere.”

The Centre, Price hopes, will be a place where science and philosophy will intersect; and he is well placed to facilitate this, as his own career has straddled both disciplines.

Originally hoping to become a physicist or an astronomer, he discovered philosophy as an undergraduate at the Australian National University (ANU). He came to Cambridge to do his PhD with Hugh Mellor, who had visited the ANU while Price was doing his first degree,

It is probably a mistake to think that any artificial intelligence, particularly one that arose accidentally, would be anything like us and would share our values, which are the product of millions of years of evolution

and encouraged his interest in philosophy of time. It became an enduring interest, and 10 years ago he established the Centre for Time in Sydney, now known internationally for its work in the philosophy and foundations of physics and time.

Earlier, in the late 1980s, these interests led him to brief notoriety as “the philosopher who took on Stephen Hawking”. “I’ve always been interested in problems such as the direction of time, and the relationship between philosophy and physics about these matters,” he says. “The 1980s were a fascinating period, thanks to the work of people like Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking.

“But when I read A Brief History of Time, there was something that puzzled me, a logical gap I thought Hawking hadn’t filled. I wrote to him and two of his collaborators, but didn’t get a response. So I wrote it up as a lighthearted commentary and sent it off to Nature, who published it [Scientific American then picked it up]. A couple of years later I sent a copy to Penrose, and was greatly reassured when he said that he had been saying that sort of thing to Hawking for years.”

A second strand of Price’s thought contin-

ues a tradition of pragmatic philosophy at Cambridge, embodied most recently by Simon Blackburn, his immediate predecessor as Bertrand Russell Professor. As Price explains, pragmatists reformulate traditional philosophical issues such as “What is truth?” or “What is causation?”

Many philosophers approach these questions by thinking of truth or causation as a distinctive kind of “thing”, or property, and asking about its nature – what kind of thing it really is. “A pragmatist thinks that’s the wrong question,” he says. “The right questions are about language or psychology: what are creatures like us doing with notions like truth and causation? What role do these concepts play in our practical and cognitive lives?” Causal concepts, for example, get explained in terms of the fact that we are decision makers, who can intervene in our environment. “Pragmatism is a practical way of doing philosophy,” Price says.

This practicality lends itself to the big questions that the new Centre might consider.

What does it mean to be human? How do we define intelligence? AI throws up all kinds of problems, says Price – some directly philosophical, such as ethical questions, and others which would benefit from philosophers’ breadth and abstract thinking. “For example, it is important to understand the range of possible intelligences that might arise in AI, especially any kind of runaway AI. We ourselves have evolved under very specific conditions.

“It is probably a mistake to think that any artificial intelligence, particularly one that just arose accidentally, would be anything like us and would share our values, which are the product of millions of years of evolution in social settings.”

He explains that this abstract issue brings up the practical question of whether it’s possible to design AI in a way that makes it more likely that any self-enhanced descendant of it would be “like us” or at least “friendly” – thus avoiding a potential danger.

Then there are more immediate problems of time. “To what extent should we allocate intellectual resources for the near future or the far future?” asks Price. “There is a tendency to discount the far future. But when you are dealing with risks on this scale, that is not a sensible policy. We at present have a very long-term interest in the survival of the species, in my view.”

Price hopes that before the end of the decade, the Centre will become well established and recognised for the quality and importance of its work. “I don’t want to be unrealistic; these are not problems that will be solved overnight,” he says. “But as Jaan often puts it, we’re trying to pump probability from one place to another. When we put on a seat belt, we’re shifting a bit of probability from the bad outcomes to the good outcomes. And that’s what we can hope to be doing here, as soon as we set up the pump.”

CAM 68 25

The Hamilton Kerr Institute is one of the world’s leading centres for teaching and research in the conservation of easel paintings, and a department of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Words Becky Allen Photographs Marcus Ginns

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

Left: View of the Hamilton Kerr Institute, over the Cam. Right: Christine Slottved Kimbriel consolidating the paint layer on Luca Giordano “Christian Charity” (private collection).

26 CAM 68

CAM 68 27

Below: Adele Wright treating the “Portrait of Slingsby” (Fitzwilliam Museum).

Bottom left: Anna Cooper retouching paint losses on Peter Lely’s “First Earl of Ailesbury” (Deene Park).

B

eside the Cam at Whittlesford, inside the former water mill that houses the Hamilton Kerr Institute, secrets are being uncovered.

A Tudor portrait by an unknown English artist is at first sight an unremarkable affair. Dressed in a black coat, his black curls falling from beneath his black hat, a young man gazes wistfully up at a blue and cloudless sky. In the middle distance, behind his left shoulder, is the Tower of London.

“This is the kind of portrait people would normally walk past without looking at,” says Dr Spike Bucklow, a senior research scientist at the Institute. “Because it’s had quite a complicated history of treatment, it looks like a dog’s breakfast, so it’s really hard to know what you’re looking at. As a result, most people don’t bother.”

The portrait, which normally hangs in the Fitzwilliam Museum, is painted on a panel rather than canvas.

It arrived earlier this year at the Institute, where postgraduate student Adele Wright is now working on the damage to both the painting and the panel.

“The panel looks rather like a dried leaf in the way it’s curled up,” she explains. “It’s warped in different direc-

28 CAM 68

Below: View of the studio.

Opposite: Radoslaw Chocha (left) and Youjin Noh (right) retouching paint losses on Antonio Verrio’s “The Sea Triumph of Charles II” (Royal Collection).

CAM 68 29

26 CAM 68

Left: Copies of paintings executed by students following procedures and techniques of original artists.

Taking a solvent-dipped swab to the surface of a Tudor painting requires nerve as well as skill and judgement

Left: Spines from the ledgers in the Roberson Archive at the Institute.

Roberson was a London company selling artists’ materials from 1819.

Left: A large range of pigments, of both ancient and modern formulation, are used in conservation treatments and technical reconstructions; some of these are made by hand at the Institute.

Frames in storage awaiting the completion of treatments on paintings; some frames need extensive conservation work themselves.

tions because of the lattice framework on the back of the painting. It was also heavily overpainted in the sky, on the face and along the joins in the panel, which were filled with putty the last time it was put back together.”

Wright’s initial task was to get back to the artist’s original by working through layers of varnish and overpaint. “The first thing I did was to give the painting a surface clean using water to remove the dust,” she says.

“Then I did some cleaning tests to look at whether I could remove the varnish and overpaints using solvents. We do tests in different areas and on different colours because they all respond differently. The blacks tend to be more sensitive than the whites, which are the most secure.”

But even with the aid of microscopes and UV photography, which help to reveal the structure of the paint layers and the distribution of overpaint, taking a solvent-dipped swab to the surface of a Tudor painting requires nerve as well as skill and judgement.

“It can be stressful,” admits Wright. “And it takes a lot of determination and time carefully looking at the layers to see if you can work out where the overpaint stops and the original begins. Sometimes you are also revealing badly damaged areas, which can be a bit alarming.”

Some of the damage was astounding rather than alarming, because as her solvent got to work on the painting, out of its clear blue sky emerged a sun ringed by a halo of billowing clouds. “It was scary at first but very exciting,” she says. “I was very excited about discovering the sun and clouds – it explained why the sitter was looking in that direction.”

And it wasn’t the only surprise that the portrait had in store. As she gently cleaned the young man’s face, Wright discovered his eyes, mouth and neck were scarred by deep scratches – a deliberate attack on the painting which, she believes, offers new clues about the sitter’s identity.

Despite a label on the back of the panel identifying him as Henry de la Pole, the Fitzwilliam Museum has always believed the portrait to be of Sir Henry Slingsby because he bears a strong resemblance to a late 16th-century miniature also in their collection.

The painting’s newly revealed iconography, however, together with the violence done to it, tie it more strongly to what Wright has been able to discover about de la Pole: that he was born in the Tower of London, remained a prisoner there throughout his life, and was beheaded at the age of 26.

Wright has yet to decide how to rejoin the two parts of the panel, and how much repainting is appropriate. But visitors to the museum will be able to see the result of her work for themselves when the portrait is re-hung in the Fitzwilliam this year – provided they take the time to stop and stare. hki.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk CAM 68 31

T

he Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus was written in Egypt at some time around 1600BC, but is based on material that may be 1,000 years older. Its primary subject is the physician’s role as a lay priest of Sekhmet, goddess of protection and destruction; yet it also describes the circulation of the blood, diagnosis by taking a patient’s pulse and how to suture a wound. It’s the earliest known example of triage. If you were unfortunate enough to sustain a severe wound in battle, you were likely to be given one of three prognoses: “An ailment I will handle”, “an ailment I will fight with” or “an ailment for which nothing can be done”.

The scroll was once the preserve of priests and kings, but it’s now on the internet; somewhat appropriately, you can scroll through it on your screen. And if you want rather more up-to-date information on suturing and the like, you can easily access millions of pages of medical knowledge, once buried deep within the pages of dusty tomes. So have medical textbooks – once the emblems of the all-knowing physician – lost their importance, or do they still retain their status on a doctor’s shelf?

“These days, most people get their information from online sources. Certainly, doctors do,” says Dr Stephen Gillam, director of public health teaching at Cambridge. “It’s a complete transformation, a huge shift in the power balance. So you could say that the audience for textbooks is limited and dwindling. But I would still argue that people like concrete products in their hands, as it were, and textbooks still provide that.”

In fact, the way we approach textbooks has gone full circle. In medieval times, they were emblematic of entrenched wisdom. “You were not going to argue with any text that had the name of Hippocrates, Galen or Avicenna on it,” says Peter Jones, Fellow and Librarian of

The first physicians’ scrolls were used by priests and kings; now doctors – and patients – go online. Lucy Jolin examines the changing role of the medical textbook.

A physician’s library 32 CAM 68

King’s College and a specialist in medieval medicine and science.

“Avicenna, with his Canon of Medicine, is really a great summation of Greek classical medicine as interpreted by Arabic philosophers and doctors. He’s at the end stage of a long sequence of work from much earlier on, when the original Greek texts were translated into Syriac, into Persian and various other languages, and then into classic Arabic. But from the point of view of Western medicine, Avicenna is more or less at the beginning.”

Greek classical medicine – in particular, Galen’s theory of the “four humours” – dominated Western medical thinking up until the early modern age. The texts themselves, including Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine and Galen’s vast series of works, became the basis upon which medical questions could be discussed: a jumping-off point. Consequently, new thinking was expressed within commentaries written on the traditional texts, rather than in entirely new texts.

Jones says: “From the 13th to the 16th century, the most commonly used set of textbooks in the classroom was the Ars Medicine – the Art of Medicine. It consisted of short works of Hippocrates and Galen and other classical authors.

“Once medicine came into the university classroom, a typical teaching method was to work through key texts line by line, reading them aloud, and then getting the students to dispute the propositions taken from these texts. Which was the most vital organ for life, for example? How do you decide which is the more significant organ – heart or brain? It all depends. If you stress the role of blood then you are tending to pay more attention to the heart. But if you are more interested in the role of sensation and movement and so on then you are probably looking more towards the

Opposite page: Planet Man, from a Book of Hours printed by Philippe Pigouchet for Simon Vostre, 1498 (vellum).

Above: Illustration from De Humani Coporis Fabrica by Andrea Vesalius. Basel, 1543 (engraving).

Left: De Motu Cordis,

by William Harvey, 1628.

Experiments demonstrating the function of the valves in the veins.

CAM 68 33

The vast hospitals of post-revolutionary Paris saw a new credo skewed towards practical knowledge. Authority was now founded in actual engagement with bodies, both live and dead

Above: Illustration of human viscera: exploded thorax.

From Anatomica universa XLIV tabulia aeniis juxta archetypum hominis adulti repraentata by Paolo Mascagni (1823-1831).

Top right: Gray’s Anatomy: Surgical anatomy of the arteries of the neck, right side.

brain. There are a lot of very complicated medieval disputes about the relevant importance of such things.”

This approach was about to undergo dramatic change. At the end of the period, textbooks themselves started to become the means through which new ideas could be communicated. In 1628, the anatomist William Harvey published his seminal work on the circulation of the blood, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (On the Movement of the Heart and the Blood in Animals), the result of his many years of practical experience in dissection.

It wasn’t strictly a textbook – more of a treatise that he “had no purpose to swell… into a large volume by quoting the names and writings of anatomists, or to make a parade of the strength of my memory.” Indeed, Harvey himself was dismissive of the role of the traditional texts: “I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from the positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.”

Harvey’s idea that the heart circulated blood around the body was initially dismissed by the entire medical establishment. It was hard to dislodge a belief that had been in force for hundreds of years – Galen’s notion that the body contained two kinds of blood, “nutritive blood” made by the liver and “vital blood” made by the heart. Yet by the end of the 18th century, Harvey’s idea had become mainstream, along with dozens of others enshrined in now-classic treatises and books.

“At that time, there was a fundamental revolution in knowledge, and specifically in medical knowledge,” says Nick Hopwood of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. “A big shift in the social relations of medicine transformed the way medics saw disease.”

The vast hospitals of post-revolutionary Paris saw a new credo skewed towards practical knowledge rather than dusty old tomes.

Authority was now founded far more than

before in actual engagement with bodies, both live and dead. Physicians focused not on the biographies of the patients but on their bodies, on the signs that they elicited from them on the wards and how they could correlate what they found on the ward with what happened postmortem in the morgue.

The doctrine ran “read little, see much, do much”. A real doctor had to get his hands dirty. But in practice, textbooks still mattered and so did the lectures to which they were linked. In Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, himself the son of a doctor, has his trainee physician Charles Bovary standing stunned at the range of courses at his hospital: “Lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on pharmacy, on chemistry and botany, on diagnosis and therapy… all names of unknown import to him: doors into so many sanctuaries filled with an august obscurity.”

Journals were increasingly the places to report discoveries. But textbooks were the keys to those doors. They began to define new fields, of which there were soon rather a lot – pathological anatomy, experimental physiology, psychology, bacteriology.

One of the best ways to establish a budding discipline or speciality was to write a textbook, says Hopwood. “If you wanted to know what knowledge a field contained, you went to a textbook or a more comprehensive handbook. So a discipline-builder would teach a course, have it published as a textbook, and try to persuade the authorities that students should be made to learn this material before they could qualify.

“The textbook defined what they had to mug up for the exam. A huge expansion in medical education in the 19th century greatly increased demand. The industrialisation of printing and publishing allowed that demand to be met by both cheaper and more highly illustrated books. In one edition after another, textbooks surveyed fields over many decades.”

CAM 68 35

36 CAM 68

Above: Semiologie des Affections du Systeme Nerveux by J. Degerine, 1914 (colour litho).

Perhaps the most famous of these fielddefining books is Gray’s Anatomy, first published in the middle of the 19th century.

Originally written by the British anatomist Henry Gray, it is currently in its 40th edition.

It has become more than simply a textbook: it’s part of popular culture, its name borrowed for a long-running US television drama.

In Ian McEwan’s Atonement, the correct draft of a fateful letter lies unsent across an opened Gray’s, while the wrong draft is delivered, setting in motion a terrible chain of events.

By the middle of the 19th century, journals had largely taken over from books – both textbooks and research monographs – for the communication of new knowledge. “There were still important exceptions,” points out Hopwood. “For example, around 1870, the periodic table in chemistry began as a device in a textbook. You could still find that kind of innovation. But generally speaking, journals presented new claims, while textbooks kept a big role in recognising them as discoveries.”

So what part does the textbook play today, in an age when a new discovery, idea or study can be flashed around the world in seconds?

The internet has revolutionised the whole business of disseminating and sharing research, says Stephen Gillam. “They have much more online, and they advance-publish material online, which goes through a quickfire review process. The whole process of review and publication has been potentially speeded up. And there’s much more open access to published papers and the data on which they are based.”

Journals may be where new ideas can be found. But as their numbers continue to proliferate, the medical professional faces a new problem of information overload. Which studies and ideas are truly relevant? Who has the time to go searching among thousands and thousands of online sources? Perhaps that’s now where the textbook’s true function lies – as a trusted source that vets and validates ideas. “Textbook authors have always had a gatekeeping function in deciding what to include and what to accept,” points out Hopwood. “So a new idea may not have to be accepted before it’s included in a textbook.

It may rather be the act of inclusion that makes it accepted.”

Speed is good, says Gillam, and so is patient empowerment. But the challenge will be getting the information to doctors as it is needed.

“The next frontier is making that information available to the practitioner on their desktop,” he says. “This process is well on the way. The future is here now. Because it’s one thing talking about research but it’s another getting it to the practitioner who wants to see the research there and then, when they see the patient.

Patients are what matter, first and foremost.”

Just as Hippocrates first wrote, thousands of years ago.

CAM 68 37

Jill Calder

University matters My Cambridge Reading list Cambridge soundtrack A sporting life Prize crossword

41 42 44 45 47 48

Extracurricular CAM 68 39

Extracurricular

University matters A newsite for Cambridge

Lyndon Hayes

Roger Taylor is Project Director for North West Cambridge

For 800 years, some of the world’s best academics have called a little town in the Fens home, thus linking the success of Gown to Town. In 2013, that means that both the University and city need to expand – which is the key driver for the University’s North West Cambridge development. The development will accommodate the need for growth and will also see enhancement of public facilities that will directly benefit not only new residents but also those existing in the surrounding areas.

In August 2012, the local authorities resolved to grant outline planning permission (subject to conditions) for the development of a site owned by the University to create an extension of the city in its north-west quadrant. This £1bn scheme on a 150-hectare site will include 1500 homes for qualifying University and College employees, 1500 homes for sale through residential developers, accommodation for 2000 graduate students, 100,000 square metres of research facilities, a wide range of community facilities and substantial areas of public space.

The challenges are immense. Perhaps the greatest is to create a new place in a city that is already extraordinary and wonderful. The intention is to create a scheme with an urban rather than suburban grain and to support design that complements the existing landscape of the area, while enhancing connectivity to and within the development.

The residential accommodation will be supported by public facilities, located mainly in the local centre, including a primary school and nursery, GP surgery, community building, supermarket, shops, public house, restaurant, police office, hotel, senior care home and market square. The University will contribute towards a new secondary school, and both University and public access to indoor sports facilities, with extensive new sports pitches, is being provided on the nearby West Cambridge site. The provision of these public facilities will enable the establishment of a strong and vibrant community from the outset.

The challenges are immense. Perhaps the largest is to create a new place in a city that is already extraordinary and wonderful

Another major challenge is affordability.

Rising house prices and rents mean that young academics are priced out of Cambridge – reducing our competitiveness when it comes to recruitment. Consequently, homes for University and College staff will be established within a unique rental model related to paying 30% of individual net household income.

Sustainability – both in terms of environment and community – has been a key driver. The development will be the first in the country on this scale to be built to the Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 (residential) and BREEAM Excellent (all other buildings).

The landscape and infrastructure plans will encourage people to lead sustainable lives through carefully considered measures, including a green travel plan with an emphasis on cycling and movement on foot, plus public transport and local parking controls. In addition, site-wide features such as an energy centre, extensive use of photovoltaic panels and water and waste management systems will enhance the site’s sustainable characteristics. Furthermore, extensive tree planting will be undertaken with other measures to protect and add to the local biodiversity and ecology of the site.

Community building doesn’t start with bricks and mortar; it begins with people.

The foundations for a new, strong community are being laid before building works commence. An important strand of public engagement is an integrated public art strategy. Although work on archaeology has only just started, local residents are being invited onto the site to work with artists, who are currently exploring themes inspired by astronomy, earth sciences and archaeology.

North West Cambridge, as the development is still known, is designed to accommodate much of the University’s long-term growth and will be delivered over the next 20 years. Preparatory and construction works for phase one of the development began over a year ago and construction works will begin later this year.

The first buildings are programmed for completion from late 2015, when North West Cambridge will begin to welcome people who will shape the future of the University.

But building places that people will want to live in for the long term is hard. It takes commitment and much effort, and there are no guarantees. By putting the community – both existing and future – first, we plan that the ambitions of the University will be met, and we will produce a development that grows and thrives, with affection, for the next 800 years.

nwcambridge.co.uk

CAM 68 41

Extracurricular

Tolbert Oringi came to ICE for the History Summer School

I emigrated to the USA from Uganda in 2006. In Uganda I didn’t go to school for 10 years because my parents couldn’t afford it, but I played sport after leaving school.

By the age of 19, I was in Uganda’s Davis Cup team, and taught tennis at the US International School in Kampala. That’s how I got a scholarship to study in America.

Now I’m in New York, on my own, going to college. My major is in international relations but I love history – it’s my favourite subject to date. I’ve taken four history classes, even though I only need one, because I fell in love with the subject.

I came to ICE in 2012 for the History Summer School. I’d never been to England and couldn’t wait to come to one of the world’s oldest and best universities. It was a remarkable experience, but it wasn’t just about learning in class; it was also about being part of the Cambridge community.

Everyone at Cambridge was very dedicated to learning, and that’s something I took home with me. And now I have friends from all over the world. We forged great relationships on campus as a group and we’re already talking about returning in 2013. I’ve not finished with Cambridge and I want to come back.

MyCambridge Interviews Becky Allen Portraits Jim Spencer

This year, Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education – ICE – celebrates its 140th anniversary.

Becky Allen investigates what it is like to be one of its students.

A brief history of ICE 1873 Professor James Stuart founds the Local Lectures Syndicate, the country's first continuing education department 1923 First International Summer Schools take place 1924 Syndicate is reestablished as Board of Extra-Mural Studies 1948 Cambridge acquires Madingley Hall

1951 Study bedrooms created from old stable block 1951 Hall used as residence for adult students on short courses 1975 Board moves its headquarters to Madingley Hall 1994 First accredited courses offered 2001 Board re-established as Institute of Continuing Education 2011 Lord Rees gives inaugural Madingley Lecture 2013 ICE launches The Friends of Madingley Hall in its 140th year

Find out about the courses that ICE offers at ice.cam.ac.uk/courses, or become a Friend of Madingley Hall at ice.cam.ac.uk/friends.

42 CAM 68

Judith Roberts is doing a Diploma in History of Art

The Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) catalogues are so beguiling – full of things you haven’t had time to pursue when you’re working. I started by going to weekend courses nearly 20 years ago, then did some modules from a Diploma in the History of Drama. After that I just couldn’t stop. I did a Diploma in History of Art and I’m currently doing a Diploma in English Literature, catching up on things I didn’t study when I read English Literature at Lucy Cavendish in the 1970s.

After Easter we have a module on modern poetry. That will be brilliant because it’s taught by a published poet and a member of the English Faculty. You get access to all these wonderful minds.

Even though I retired in 2011, I want to use my time productively.

I want retirement to be something where I keep my brain active, not put my feet up. I don’t like the idea of winding down.

And ICE courses are more challenging than a book group – I want to be made to do some writing. Writing essays really clarifies your ideas, and it makes you spend time in libraries, with a goal in mind.

I go to the University Library to read and have a bowl of soup in the tearoom. When I’m there, everything else disappears. You just bury your head in what you’re doing, and it’s lovely.

There are eight of us on my current diploma. The youngest is 23 and the oldest is a man in his 70s. We’re an incredibly multiethnic group – a Syrian, an Iranian, an American and someone from Singapore. It’s a good mix and people bring different experiences to the course.

The building makes it special, too. I still have lots of contact with my own College, Lucy Cavendish, but for many people, Madingley Hall has become their college. It’s so beautiful.

I’m 22 and live in Zagreb, where I’m doing a degree in integrative psychology. In 2011 I did the Certificate in Coaching at ICE, and now I’m doing the Diploma.

I chose coaching because it’s a nice supplement to studying psychology and I chose ICE because of the distance learning.

I come to Cambridge three times a year for lectures, and in between I write an essay. We also have a Virtual Learning Environment with video conferencing, so we can discuss our personal coaching journeys with tutors and other students. We have coaching sessions with our course-mates, which helps us see our blind spots. It’s also our support system, and because we have all sorts of cultures and ethnicities on the course, it’s really interesting to see how differently people use coaching.

Keith, our tutor, is a bit enigmatic. You expect to be told what to do and how to do it, but he doesn’t do that. He’s a good facilitator, and sometimes stretches you beyond your comfort zone. That’s why he’s a great tutor.

When I look at what education and Cambridge means to me, it’s about personal development, not prestige. The course has made me more aware of my own thinking, patterns of behaviour, and listening. There’s a big difference between hearing and listening.

It’s a real skill and takes a lot of energy.

I’d like to return to Cambridge to study in future. I love the history and the architecture, and the fact that there are so many museums and cultural events in such a small place. And there are so many young people, studying diverse subjects and interested in intellectual study. It’s fantastic to be around smart people.

In 2011 Dario Ostojic completed a Certificate in Coaching; he is now doing the Diploma

CAM 68 43

Extracurricular

Readinglist SueBrindley

Interview Lucy Jolin Steve Bond

Sue Brindley is Senior Lecturer in Education, Fellow and Director of Studies at Lucy Cavendish College and winner of a 2012 Pilkington Prize.

orget the political intrigue, sexual frustration, violence and ambition.

“It was the magic,” says Sue Brindley of her childhood fascination with Macbeth.

“All children are caught up by the idea of magic – and that, of course, is exactly where Macbeth scores points. The world and its curious presentation; the world is not always as it seems. Children are so brilliant at destroying our notions of reality.”

But Brindley didn’t just happen upon Macbeth. The play was introduced to her in such a way that she was caught up in its power. For this, she thanks Mr Jardine, her English teacher at Greenford County Grammar School.

“I love Shakespeare as I do because of Mr Jardine,” she says. “He taught us Macbeth in what I now see are quite modern ways – interpretation, standing up, acting, recognising language and its power and impact. We weren’t just sitting there, reading.

It was absolutely enchanting to me to be taught in that way. I felt completely immersed in the power of Shakespeare.

“But the real turning point was when my parents moved and I went to another grammar school. The teaching there was completely different. We just read round the class.

We were given a character and told to say the words. I could not believe the contrast.

People in my class hated Shakespeare because it was ‘dreary’. I thought, how could you possibly say Shakespeare is dreary?

That was my bright light. I began to think about the role of teachers, and of course that became a career choice.

“It got me thinking about how being a teacher is very like being a director: you have a profound understanding of the materials in hand, a clear version of how those could be interpreted, an ability to involve all participants fully, incorporating others’ views, recognising the actors’ own interests and strengths, and the ability to draw on other sources and texts to illuminate both the materials and the pathways to engagement. The outcome is a production. And of course, we hope our

F

44 CAM 68

She remembers setting students the ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’ speech.

“They sang it very softly, to the tune of ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’, rocking like disturbed children. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up”

audiences go out talking about the play too.”

Brindley says she continues to be amazed at the myriad ways in which the play can be made new. Setting a group of teaching students the task of doing something new with the ubiquitous “Double, double, toil and trouble” speech, she found herself spellbound at their interpretation. “They sang it very softly, to the tune of ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’, rocking like disturbed children,” she remembers. “It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I think about it

CAMCard discount at Heffers The Heffers’ Cambridge alumni discount is 15%. Shop in person with your CAMCard at Trinity Street or online at: alumni.cam.ac.uk/ benefits/camcard/bookshops.

Extracurricular

Cambridgesoundtrack Ewan Pearson, DJ

Interview Dorian Lynskey

Recent reads Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning

by HA Giroux (Bergin and Garvey) “I’m working on a teaching knowledge project so am deeply immersed in work books at the moment – this isn’t my bedtime reading! Giroux sets out why he believes that the politicisation of the curriculum should be resisted.”

Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity

by Basil Bernstein (Rowman and Littlefield) “Another work book. This one is looking at the way that teacher identity is constructed.”

Aliya Naumoff

now, and it still does.” She also remembers a particularly notable version of Macbeth at the Globe, in which the witches wore evening dress and threw black feathers around to symbolise evil, and the cast spoke in syncopated jazz rhythms. “It divided us!” she remembers. “And I think that’s good.

Shakespeare’s plays are a marvellous illustration of the idea that there are many truths. That’s why whenever I revisit these plays, they have a different story to tell me.”

Brindley’s twin passions for Shakespeare and teaching inspired her to set up the MEd Understanding Shakespeare through Performance module in partnership with the Globe Theatre. Her work on the module contributed to her being awarded a University Pilkington Prize for outstanding teaching.

A conference on teaching Shakespeare will run next year, and a major research project is also planned. “Working with the Globe is fantastic,” says Brindley. “It’s the only time you’re ever likely to sit in a meeting and watch a bunch of Roman centurions wander by.

But despite her own formative experience of being taught Macbeth, Brindley doesn’t agree that Shakespeare should be imposed on schools. “That obligation sets up barriers and difficulties,” she says. “Rather, I want teachers to have the opportunity to teach Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets creatively.

It’s bold, it’s innovative, it’s risk-taking, it’s enjoyment. I think we should never underestimate the power of enjoyment in learning.

Ewan Pearson (Girton 1990)

Primal Scream – Loaded The record that reminds me of freshers’ week When the original house records came out, I really wasn’t sure; but when Andrew Weatherall remixed Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine, my head exploded.

Weatherall was my hero at university and now he’s with the same DJ agency as I am.

This record reminds me of meeting this guy with a little blond bob, wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt. He looked slightly ravey. He became a really good friend of mine: Mike. He’s an architect now.

Saint Etienne – Foxbase Alpha The record that reminds me of my first summer in Cambridge It was always on. It’s definitely the soundtrack to that period in my head. I remember finding a promo of Saint Etienne’s second single in a shop called Andy’s Records on Mill Road.

I would scour the shop for things like that.

Ah, when the internet didn’t exist!

Chimo Bayo – Así Me Gusta A Mí (X-Ta Sí, X-Ta No) The record that reminds me of DJing at college parties Mike and I bought a Technics turntable each, and they’d live in one or other of our rooms as we desperately learned to beat-mix.

We couldn’t afford two each. This is a Spanish rave classic that we would ping-pong between each other as we tried to learn.

There were a lot of bad white jazz-funk bands at university, and DJing as a replacement for that had only just started to happen. When we were first years, we were hassling the older people to let us play and they’d say: “Piss off!”

But by the time you’re a third year, they’ve gone and someone has to put on a party.

A Certain Ratio – Shack Up The record that reminds me of my College ball People used to laugh at our little crew who were interested in dance music. I suppose we must have seemed cliquish and full of it,

because we were leaving Cambridge to do stuff in London and Nottingham. There was a bit of friction, but as you got older and started organising events, people would come and enjoy them. It’s not that we brought rave to Girton, because we really didn’t; but we did put [punk-funk band] A Certain Ratio on at our College ball, which was peculiar – a load of people dancing in dinner jackets to Shack Up. South Street Player – (Who?) Keeps Changing Your Mind The record that reminds me of the last time I was in Cambridge We went back to DJ at one of the Colleges the year after we graduated. I remember falling asleep drunk outside afterwards and getting sunburnt. It has been 18 years since I’ve been to Cambridge. The only thing I ever did in terms of paying something back was sending a copy of my book to Girton Library.

The English department was where I got my head blown open by critical theory. I moved on to a Masters in Cultural Studies and co-authored a book on dance music, so there was something that combined the two interests. It was lovely being able to finish it and dedicate it to people like Mike.

Ewan Pearson is a DJ, producer, remixer and blogger. ewanpearson.com

CAM 68 45

Extracurricular

cu-sparrows.org.uk cuefc.co.uk

A sporting life Rugby fives

Interview Becky Allen Marcus Ginns With thanks to Oundle School.

efore they were demolished in 1995, the three Rugby fives courts on Portugal Place had echoed to the sound of ball and footfall for more than 100 years. They were built in 1892, and their passing was marked by a series of fives matches – of both the Eton and Rugby variety – and a speech by the Cambridge badminton coach Peter Ridgeon.

Ridgeon recalled his lifelong friendship with Sid Tabor, the rose-growing, chainsmoking squash pro who, despite having a leg and lung ulcerated by mustard gas, regularly beat undergraduates while wearing a long black overcoat, flannels and brown trilby – even after giving them a head start.

Today’s players, who travel to Oundle School to train, miss having courts closer to hand. “There are 12 players at Cambridge,” says Rugby fives captain Ed Kay. “Because we don’t have courts, only people who played at school tend to play here. It’s tough to advertise to newcomers when you don’t have facilities and there’s nothing you can show them unless they travel to Oundle, which is 50 minutes away. Some have come along but they don’t keep it up. It’s a big time commitment because of the travelling.”

Kay, whose Rugby fives career began at the age of 13, took to the sport for its physical and social buzz. “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I really enjoy it and the atmosphere around it,” he explains. “At most tournaments you get the same players turning up, so it’s like meeting old friends.

“It’s physically very demanding, more so than squash. It’s hard to play if you’re not fit.

It’s hard to finish off a rally and games can be very long.”

If you’ve never seen a game of fives, think of it as squash minus the racket. “It’s played with a squash-sized baseball, and you wear padded leather gloves to save your hands from getting bruised. It’s only possible to win points when you’re returning serve, and the tactics are also similar to squash – you try to wear your opponent down by making them run as much as possible, while running as little as possible yourself.”

Despite being variants of the same game, Rugby and Eton fives have a number of differences – most notably in the make-up of the court. A Rugby fives court is a relatively straightforward affair: four-sided and smaller than a squash court, with lines on its usually black walls. The three-sided Eton fives court strongly echoes the game’s

B

origins. Before the advent of courts, boys played fives against the walls of Eton’s 15th-century chapel, and elements of its architecture – most notably a small buttress – are reflected in the Eton fives court.

“Really, the only similarity is hitting the ball with your hands,” says Kay. “I’ve only played Eton fives once but I found it really odd, all those strange bits of the court and odd angles because of the edges and the buttress. And the rules are bit different, too.”

Although the Eton fives club at Cambridge still has access to a court in the grounds of

Magdalene College, help is at hand for both games in the shape of the new University sports centre. Work began at the West Cambridge site in May 2012, and the fives community raised sufficient funds for Rugby and Eton fives courts to be included in the new centre, for the enjoyment of future generations.

“In the past we’ve struggled to get a team out for the Varsity match,” says Kay. “New courts will help get the sport out there, and encourage people from other sports to learn fives. We need to get more people playing.”

CAM 68 47

Extracurricular

✄

CAM 68 Prize Crossword

One or Other

by Wan

ACROSS 1

7 11 12 13 14 16 18 19 21 22 25 29 30 32 33

All entries to be received by 13 May 2013 Send completed crosswords: • by post to CAM 68 Prize Crossword, CARO, 1 Quayside, Bridge Street, Cambridge CB5 8AB • by email to cameditor@alumni.cam.ac.uk • or enter online at alumni.cam.ac.uk/cam The first correct entrant will receive a copy of The Cambridge Phenomenon, the fascinating history of the last 50 years of this technological explosion (TMI, £50). Two runners-up will also receive £35 to spend on CUP publications.

35 36 37

DOWN 1 Rainy cloud touching the ground holding oxygen (6) 2 Lass missing daughter hardens (6) 3 Brilliant choice heaving south east to change course (6) 4 Spill a bit of tea from cup or mug (4) 5 One might use them for basting tins and to capture the last bit of juice when cooked (7) 6 Speaker has upset the old queen (5) 8 Teaching aides are undisciplined and trouble turning up (6) 9 Seat with head dropping forward forces transfer to another(6) 10 Got on well together without a longing (6) 15 Unaccompanied man collecting to travel in Scotland is obtrusively conspicuous (6) 17 Roman Catholic for example split off cheering (6) 20 Enters a cult as sign of things to come (7) 22 Prodding ruffian once with a terse rollicking (6) 23 The outside loo dropping both ends is proper (6) 24 Not after a way to fly mechanically (6) 26 Asexual body that reproduces very much without partner primarily (6) 27 Told Greek judge to back child as trial’s beginning (6) 28 Fool in charge spades rocks (6) 29 Wort cultivated as produce (5) 31 Occurring from time to time through dropping of one halogen element (4)

Solution to CAM 67 Crossword Sacco Mala by Schadenfreude

Solutions and winners will be printed in CAM 69 and posted online at alumni.cam.ac.uk/cam on 21 May 2013.

Winner: David Steward (Sidney Sussex 1976) Runner-ups: Owen Britton (Corpus Christi 2002) and Professor Adrian Gratwick (St John's 1961).

Special mentions: David Tombs (Trinity 1982) for his most elegant and comprehensive exposition of the puzzle's solution. Christian Skene (Girton 1940) for the earliest matriculation date.

INSTRUCTIONS In ten pairs of clues solvers must move one letter from one clue to the other before solving and in the other ten pairs move one letter from one answer to the other before entry into the grid. Solvers need to deduce the logic behind pairings.

All answers in One or Other are in Chambers (2011) as are all entries left behind after modification. Entry lengths are shown.

48 CAM 68

34

Intends to arrange a flow going the wrong way on motorway (8) Nearly refuse support (4) Sexpert blunders undressing (4) Only non-electronic tone in games console (6) Stealing cattle from broken ring (7) Mainly forage cover for head (4) Lie in downstairs and cry loudly (6) Muscle in immediately or one may see (8) Consider backing out of poet's gang with leader absent (4) Initially seems as if it is yellowish-brown (5) An offence wrapping to flog a class of drugs (5) Japanese fishes eating without order (4) Rock formation—a trio embracing African music (8) Correctly dress wearing hat band (6) One served in paltry rusty dish (4) British soldier once cracked code piecing snippets of radio announcements together (7) Tenor, one tired and emotional, is returning for a hug (6) Ample from butcher selling tongue (4) Scots long for an Irish symbol (4) Guards samples losing some initially (8)

Encoded answers comprise the named dramatis personae (less the eponymous heroine) of “Princess Ida or Castle Adamant” which forms the 26-letter code string. In clue order thematic answers are: Scynthius, Sacharissa, Ada, *Psyche, Guron, Chloe, **Hildebrand, *Blanche, Arac, **Gama, Lady*, Cyril, Florian, King**, Hilarion and Melissa.

Pairings are shown by * and **.

The title is an encryption of HOTEL WORK, a reference to the SAVOY OPERAS.