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Reminiscences and Best Wishes
The Master, Lord Smith of Finsbury
This will, I fear, be the last edition of the Martlet for which I will write the Master’s Foreword. I will be stepping down as Master at the end of July this year, after ten joyous years in post. I’m already feeling very nostalgic about doing everything (dinners, events, services, forewords) for the last time. Ten years have gone in a flash. We’ve lived through a lot during that decade: Brexit, Covid, the ups and downs of getting the Mill Lane development done, and now the overturning of the entire geopolitical order that we had come to live with. Through it all, Pembroke has thrived. And I’m rather proud to have been at the helm through all the twists and turns of fortune.
Looking back over the ten years, I have been reflecting on the highlights. The Mill Lane development, of course – now completed and fully up and running. It ended up a few months late (perhaps inevitably), but under budget. It expands the physical footprint of the College by more than a third; it has been the largest development we have ever done in our 678 years of history. It includes three new courtyards, ninety new student rooms, an Auditorium, an exhibition space, a new gatehouse, lots of teaching and meeting and seminar rooms, a café, a screening room, a new gym, space for offices, and of course a climbing wall. It looks – and is – terrific. We now have room to breathe; we had been severely constrained for space on the historic site. We made a deliberate decision, however, that we weren’t going to expand the number of students, either undergraduate or postgraduate. We believe we’re the right size: big enough to be able to offer every subject, but small enough for everyone to feel part of an intimate community. We want to preserve that intimacy.
Mill Lane has been heavily time-consuming through these past years, but the life of the College has continued to sing. Some of the moments I will particularly treasure are when I have been able to bring guest speakers in to talk with our students. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, when Covid distancing rules were still in place, came to have a discussion with Rowan Williams and a couple of students about the ethics of climate change. The students outshone everyone! The Booker-prize-winning novelist Ben Okri, came to talk about beauty and art and writing. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart did a conversation about collaboration across political divides. Recently, Sir Ian McKellen, did an ‘in conversation’ event with me in our new Auditorium, reminiscing about his student days, theatre, and LGBT+ equality. He asked me before the event, ‘I want you to ask me to do some Shakespeare’. So I did; and he went up into the pulpit to declaim the most wonderful Shakespeare speech as the finale for the evening. And most recently of all, the events to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the admission of women included a panel event with two Dames, three Professors and a Baroness talking about women’s leadership in public life, rapidly followed by Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, giving a sparkling speech which really did show she had done her homework on the struggles Pembroke had when we made the decision to go co-educational.
It is of course entirely appropriate that in this fortieth anniversary year the Fellows should have decided to elect a woman to be my successor. I’m thrilled that they have elected Professor Polly Blakesley to take over as Master. Polly is a hugely distinguished Professor of History of Art, and has been a Fellow of Pembroke for the past twenty-
two years. She will, I know, want to continue to foster the spirit of openness and togetherness that I have constantly striven to maintain through the years of my term. And she will be moving into the Master’s Lodge with her husband, two late-teen children, two dogs and a clutch of chickens. I’m worried about the chickens: there is a fox who prowls the Master’s garden occasionally, and the hen-house will need to be very robust to deter him!
One of the things I (perhaps foolishly) volunteered to do a while back was to do the editing of a glossy book of photographs and text on The Buildings and Gardens of Pembroke. When Ray Dolby made his handsome bequest to the College, he specified it was for ‘the buildings and grounds of Pembroke’, and the book is designed to celebrate those. It is now finished, and published, and is really beautiful. It includes chapters on Mill Lane, on the history and acquisition of the site, and the way the architecture and gardens took shape; but it also includes some of the architecture, the gardens, the walks, the history, and the rooms of the historic College. It will beautifully grace anyone’s coffee-table. I warmly recommend acquiring it.
I have often been asked, over the past ten years, ‘do you enjoy being Master of Pembroke?’. And having given an enthusiastic ‘yes’ in response, I then say: ‘Look, I’m living in a very beautiful place; I’m surrounded by highly intelligent people; and I’m surrounded by young people at the outset of their lives. What is not to like about this?’ I believe that to be very true. It’s the point about young people that’s probably the most important. They, after all, are what Pembroke is all about. It’s about taking really bright students, and leading them through a journey of exploration, of discovery, of debate, of search for truth and of self-knowledge. In a world where we are too often these days losing a sense of reality and truth, there is no more important mission than this. I wish Pembroke all the good fortune in the world, in setting out into the future. Contents
40 years of Women at Pembroke
Loraine Gelsthorpe on Pembroke’s special celebration of International Women’s Day, 8th March 2025
The first part of celebrating this momentous day in College began with a session on ‘Networking and how to do it successfully’. Dr Monica Wirz (2009), Research Fellow at Cambridge’s Judge Business School, and Partner at Clue Train Consulting (which bridges academic and corporate worlds) introduced ideas regarding networking. She created a platform for students to experience networking as a genuine interactional endeavour. Her integration of the philosophy of the self was beautifully done. Indeed, she conveyed networking as something which hinges on establishing a brand image of the self, underpinned by principles of humanity and understanding of how women actually socialise.
The networking was organised in a way so that individuals got to engage with all of the alumnae present. Students fell into random groups of three and rotated around the tables, with a handy catalogue of information available so that everyone could have an idea of what questions and interests there might be in common. This format lowered the pressure significantly, especially for those who might have felt anxious in an unstructured social setting, All the attendees found someone they could connect with or learn something from.
With huge thanks to Jane Moore (1984), Clare Todd (née Baker (1998), Fran Page (1993), Angelie Moledina (1993), Heather Rankin (2007), Hannah Whittock (2008), Charlotte Chorley (2012), and Lucy Lim (2013) as alumnae covering a wide range of experiences and adventures in work, including consultancy on the equitable representation of women and minority groups in companies and organisations, to consultancy on social and environmental impact, communications, PR and marketing with both large technology companies and small biotech firms, research science in Frontier Safety and Governance at Google DeepMind and work in the Civil Service and Welsh Government. These destinations were not their starting
points, and one of the key messages from the morning was to ‘throw yourself in and be open to pivots’.
The afternoon entitled ‘Women Leaders in Public Life’ was equally memorable. Five distinguished women spoke about their careers, and what they have learned from their journeys. From Professor Dame Marina Warner (eminent writer, historian, and critic), we learned about gendered and cultural assumptions in the 1950s and 60s – with references to ‘dolly birds’ and Cliff Richard’s song ‘Living Doll’ – Got myself a cryin’, talkin’, sleepin’, walkin’, livin’ doll. Got to do my best to please her just ’cause she’s a livin’ doll’! – expressing expectations of the time about the role of women. Warner’s was a story of sexual revolution, challenges to male supremacy, and contained strong encouragement to speak up and take a stand.
From Professor Dame Igeoma Uchegbu (President of Wolfson College and Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscieece at UCL) we learned about changing aspirations, and the importance of education in shaping life, but also the need to challenge decisions – whether this be to do with housing benefits or academic contracts. Structural barriers abound, and it is important to have courage to challenge them.
Bel Trew (2004), a multi-award winning Chief International Correspondent for the Independent (film maker and photographer), spoke movingly about the challenges of her early career in journalism – working in a male-dominated profession where women might easily be described as ‘overwrought or hysterical’ when trying to capture the realities of conflict. She observed that it is the story of the teenage boy who has lost his mum and pet hedgehog rather than ‘bang bang conflict journalism’ with its fetishism of war which will more likely reach hearts and minds. Thus, stories of ‘truth and compassion’ can set us free.
Dame Cressida Dick, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, described early beginnings (working in a fish & chip shop and in accountancy) following her first degree, which seem distant from a career in policing, but which clarified for her things which she did not want to do. Inspired by her mother’s resilience, a concomitant strong sense of public service, and a clear sense of injustice, she entered a male-dominated profession not knowing where she would end up, but ultimately enjoyed being in a leadership position and able to set the tone for the Metropolitan Police. She reminded us that a statue of Millicent Fawcett who campaigned for women’s suffrage by legal change and in 1897–1919 led Britain’s largest women’s rights association stands 40 metres from New Scotland Yard – with the pressing message that to make a fairer world for women, everyone needs to be involved.
Finally, the Rt Hon. Patricia Scotland, Secretary General of the Commonwealth, introduced the concept of ‘intersectional oppression’, describing her own career and challenges along the way. Quoting the words of Nelson Mandela that ‘everything is impossible until it is done’, she encouraged everyone (and she meant everyone) to see the value of education as a passport to change and to champion women’s leadership because there is still much work to be done to reduce gender-based violence, for instance, and to continue to ‘break barriers’ to change.
The afternoon skilfully chaired by Professor Polly Blakesley and was a fitting tribute to the 40th anniversary of women being admitted to Pembroke!
(From L to R) Panellists Professor Dame Marina Warner, Baroness Scotland, Dame Cressida Dick, Bel Trew, Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, and chair Professor Polly Blakesley.
Loraine Gelsthorpe is an Emerita Fellow and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.
Speech! Speech!
Sophie Cleaves (2023) on a Pembroke lecture by Julia Gillard, former Australian Prime Minister
In 2018, at the age of thirteen, I stumbled upon Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech on Instagram, a speech she gave in opposition to Tony Abbott during an Australian Parliament Question Time in 2012. The words ‘I will not be lectured on sexism and misogyny by this man, I will not’ made a real impression. As a young girl on the edge of womanhood, they made me understand how much I would have to stand up for myself in life, but also gave me hope that one day I would be powerful enough to do so. Fast forward to February 2025, when I received an email about an ex-Prime Minister of Australia coming to speak at Pembroke. As a History and Politics student, who is determined to take all of the opportunities she can get whilst here in Cambridge, I immediately signed up. It wasn’t until later, when I texted an aunt who lives in Adelaide to question who Julia was (in turn sparking the connection in my mind between this ex-Prime Minister and her speech), that I realised quite how inspiring the event would be.
In anticipation and excitement, I rewatched Gillard’s fifteen-minute speech in the days leading up to the ‘Celebrating 40 Years of Women at Pembroke’ Distinguished Lecture. When I arrived, the Auditorium was full of similarly eager students, Fellows, and alumni excited to hear what Gillard had to say. And I will say, she did not disappoint us!
Opening the speech by addressing the admission of women merely 40 years ago, Gillard allowed us to reflect upon the change that had occurred since then. Whilst her reference to a question at the time about whether there would be a need for tissues in admissions interviews brought me back to the emotion of my own interview, I was really able to reflect on how attitudes had changed in the College. As the Women’s Officer for Pembroke’s Junior Parlour Committee, I understand that there is still work to be done to improve women’s experiences in the University. But what I really felt was grateful for those who have come before me: those in the 1980s who fought for women’s admission; previous Women’s Officers who have developed some of the schemes I continue; countless individuals all making Pembroke what it is today. As Gillard reflected upon the great things that Pembroke women have done, I felt grateful for the opportunity to attempt to follow in their footsteps, despite the mixed emotions that come from the thought of the wasted potential of over 600 years before.
around me at my male friends and fellow students I don’t see this. But that is why they are my friends; that is why I associate with them. And that is also why this lecture was so important. It shocked many audience members into understanding that there is still so much more to be done. Furthermore, Gillard’s consideration of some causes of this change (such as young men’s educational and economic disadvantages, the online environment we see revealed in TV shows such as Adolescence, and a more empowered generation of women threatening male perceptions of their power) meant we were able to reflect upon what we can do to bring back a fight for equality.
Gillard outlined to us how she views that fight. Her ‘three Rs’ propose three steps for addressing the negative way in which gender equality is viewed: resist, reflect, reenergise. We must resist egregious claims about equality and feminism. We must reflect upon why there is not more support for the struggle. We must re-energise and continue fighting, with enthusiasm. These steps make easier what I want to do in promoting the voices of women in Pembroke, and in our wider society. When a family member recently questioned the necessity of my role as Women’s Officer on the JPC, I drew upon what Gillard had taught me. I resisted his claims that women don’t need their own representative in college. I reflected upon why he might believe this (and mentioned the existence of a Men’s Welfare Officer to emphasise why feminism is important for all genders). I re-energised myself and enthusiastically outlined all of the schemes I help to run that I am so passionate about.
In contrast to the change that I can pinpoint in the College, Gillard’s discussion of current discourse surrounding equality stirred me. She revealed that Gen Z, those in my generation, are actually far less likely than older generations to support gender equality and feminism, with only 32% of Gen Z men characterising themselves as a feminist. I was shocked to hear this – in disbelief that our younger generation has gone from being one of the most progressive generations in recent history to one of the most conservative. I was shocked because when I look
And with that, I realised that perhaps I was becoming more like the woman that I had admired when I was thirteen. Gillard’s 2012 speech was brought up in a question after the lecture. She revealed that she came up with the speech practically on the spot. Our Master-to-be Polly Blakesley, and the rest of the audience, appeared both astounded and incredibly inspired. But Gillard’s explanation of the process made us realise that, with time and effort, if she could do it then so could we. The lecture had highlighted to many of us that equality is something we want to fight for, something we still need to fight for, and something that we can fight for, and my inner thirteen year old is excited to see what I will do with Julia’s inspiration.
Sophie Cleaves (2023) is reading History and Politics and is the current Women’s Officer on Pembroke’s Junior Parlour Committee.
Julia Gillard in conversation with Polly Blakesley
The deadline for writing this passed a couple of weeks ago, and so I find myself, metaphorical tail between metaphorical legs, writing this from my room in a Sydney hotel. I have been spending the last few days with the Master, meeting alumni in Singapore, Hong Kong and here in Sydney, before a last stop in Melbourne then home.
I don’t think my job has ever been easier, or more enjoyable. We bask in the glow of a successfully completed The Time and the Place campaign, I work in an incredible place, now all the more so, with brilliant people in the Fellowship, on the College staff, with students and of course the Development team, and therefore what is not to like? I shall constrain my Britishness and ensure I do not dwell on the answer to this…
At any rate, I would have to work hard – the
support of alumni – never taken for granted – and generations of students who broadly appreciate the College for what it was, is, and will be.
When Andrew Cates came to the College in 2013, it was clear that a massive building project lay ahead, and while we had an inkling of where we would build if we could, we were some metaphorical distance away from being able to do so. The Dolby family did of course go a huge way towards solving one of the major questions at the time, and then some expert negotiations by Andrew and his predecessor Chris Blencowe brought everything together. If you haven’t visited the College in the past few years, I strongly urge you to do so – it looks pristine, but is already in good use, and you can get good coffee there. Again, what’s not to like? The suite of facilities, the lovely student accommodation and the College’s enhanced sense of place in both the University and the city – together with the responsibilities that sense brings – are forever changed, and for the better. The next great chapter in the College’s story begins here, with what we go on to do and achieve in Mill Lane and in the medieval site, for our students, academics, staff and alumni and what impact we can and should bring to bear on the world beyond
My deep sadness at learning some time ago of Anna Lapwood’s impending departure from Pembroke is matched only by my joy at having had the chance to work with and get to know her. I must declare an interest –the Girls’ Choir, which I trust will be a long-lasting and impressive legacy of hers, was founded in 2018, and my youngest child was privileged to become a member of it and remain in it as long as it has been in existence. What Anna has done for a great number of very talented girls and young women, and for Pembroke’s musical reputation more broadly, will not be forgotten. In a bitter-sweet way, we wish her all the very best.
This leads nicely to another reflection, on the celebrations of Pembroke’s 40th anniversary of admitting women as students. There has been a huge amount accomplished this year, not least thanks to my close colleagues in the Development team, especially Nami Morris. Inspiration has been the order of the year, topped by a magnificent occasion when Julia Gillard gave a brilliant talk to a packed Pembroke Auditorium full of insight and lessons, but
In what has become a rather discombobulating and topsy-turvy world – and that’s being kind – it is assuring to know that Pembroke remains a steady and nimble ship. This is driven by the place and its people, and these are what will form the crux of what we do next: making inspiring use of our spaces, nurturing and inspiring our students, supporting researchers and their research, and finding ways of helping our young people in particular formulate their ideas for a brighter future.
will, I am sure, write more about what next in the and in my next article for the Martlet. What I am sure of is that the next Master, the next Bursar, and the next Director of Music will be greeted as warmly by those lucky enough to be in Pembroke, and those lucky enough to have been in Pembroke, as their predecessors were. Thank you for being part of the continuity, the progress and, thrillingly I trust, the future.
The End of the Beginning
Matthew Mellor on the Official Opening of Dolby Court
TThe Martlet has landed.
The gods smiled on Pembroke on Saturday 10th May 2025, when they blessed it with glorious weather to delight the heart of even the most hard-bitten cynic. Yes, Martin Rowson (1978) was there himself to record a remarkable moment – perhaps the end of the beginning of the College’s near 700-year history, when more than a decade of preparation, negotiation, planning, fundraising and generosity were celebrated in quite some style.
Staged as ‘Pembroke: the Next Chapter’, the aim of the day, as conceived largely by Mark Wormald and Nami Morris, and executed by pretty much every department of the College, was to give our guests, drawn from among the leading benefactors to The Time and the Place campaign, an impression of what Pembroke people are capable of, and to inspire ideas for what more can be achieved, in the new spaces we have created.
The day began with a warm-hearted welcome and introduction by Dagmar Dolby and a ribbon-cutting moment for her and Ray’s family to open the whole of the site. Guests then moved from the delightful Blyth Gardens onto tours of the student accommodation to see just what luxuries the 21st-century Pembroke undergraduates and graduates enjoy… people were impressed and, dare I say, envious.
The McCaughan Room in 4 Mill Lane hosted a revival of the ‘Memories and Martlets’ exhibition, originally on display as part of the 40th-Anniversary celebration of the admission of women students. From there they could move to Milstein House, containing the central social spaces of the court complex. There, Ailsa McTernan (2021), Alvaro Hurtado, and Reuben Bance could be heard in a live rehearsal in the Ferguson-Nazareth Room on the first floor, and across the landing, the Chadwick Partnership Centre and Passingham Room were open for people to see for themselves just what a constructively welcoming space there now is for our corporate and other partners. Café ’84
hosted the lead architects, Beatie Blakemore and Hannah Constantine of Haworth Tompkins, answering questions about the story of the development. Almost every space was featured: the Furniss Screen Room looped a video about the Dolby story. In the Gatehouse exhibition room ‘Brick-byBrick’, a fine display of interesting objects and documents relating to Pembroke’s architecture could be enjoyed. These included an extraordinary LegoTM model of the Waterhouse Library, constructed by 4th-Year Engineer Malachy Fox (2020).
Is there a limit on the number of pièces a résistance can have? Surely there can’t be, because when guests moved to the Auditorium, there was a whole suite of them in evidence.
First, a world première by the College choir of a stunning and specially-commissioned piece by Lucy Walker, Ode to St Cecilia, celebrating the aforementioned 40th Anniversary. Anna Lapwood, who introduced and conducted the piece, would later compère the remainder of the afternoon with the redoubtable actor Alex Macqueen (1996). Then, Professor Mike Payne FRS, Emeritus Fellow and a long-standing member of the Cavendish Laboratory, itself a grateful recipient of Dolby munificence, was in conversation with Dave Dolby, one of Ray’s sons, and longstanding friends and collaborators Ioan Allen and David Robinson (1959). The day before, the Dolby family had partaken in the grand opening of the Ray Dolby Centre which their generosity had realised: the Centre has already been described by some as a ‘game-changer for science’.
Renowned theatre director Tom Morris (1983), whose production of War Horse at the Bristol Old Vic pushed remarkable boundaries for what’s possible in theatre, interviewed Jack Thorne (1998), renowned writer and sparker of national and international conversations with numerous excellent works, most recently and notably with his jointly-written Adolescence. Jack then interviewed Tom back; together they delved into the creative process, the role of the audience itself in sharing in the story and ‘creating
Dagmar Dolby, her granddaughters, sons Tom and Dave Dolby and Spencer Alcorn prepare to cut the ribbon to open officially the Dolby Court site, watched on by the Master.
the horse’, and reflected on just why places like Pembroke are so good for those wishing to try things, fail, try, fail, try and eventually succeed in a community of friends.
Anna and Alex then hosted a very Pembroke version of a chat show, enchanted by a wonderful and virtuoso clarinet performance of I Got Rhythm by the celebrated musician Emma Johnson (1985). Emma, Jonny Sweet (2003), Joe Thomas (2003), and Tom Basden (2000) then spoke candidly about their own failures and successes, much to the amusement and elucidation, and I dare say, inspiration of the Auditorium guests. Jonny, Joe, and Tom told similar stories about the writing and performance process, the struggles involved, and the slight disbelief when things go well. Things have gone well. Ti Green (1987) reflected engagingly on her experience working both as a great creator herself and with others so blessed.
The Auditorium sequence was completed, gorgeously, by a very Pembroke-choir (Dec Foster and Dan Heathcote) arrangement of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, after which guests made their way across to the ‘medieval site’ for dinner, much enlivened by a brilliant reprise by Eric Idle (1962) of his Campaign launch song, in which he urged us to ‘ditch the “broke” from Pembroke and just call it “Pem”’.
Our Campaign Board leads, Marcus Bökkerink (1983) and Jo Prior (1984) reminded us that ‘Pembroke matters’ and urged us to go and create a better future together, learning and working in and with Pembroke. The Master capped off a momentous day with elegant and insightful reflections, all the while flooded with gratitude, urging us to make the best possible use of the new spaces ‘we have created’, but for at least a moment, to be satisfied with what has been achieved to form a new foundation for this work.
So, did ‘Pembroke: the Next Chapter’ get its message across? I think it was best summed up by one of the guests who reflected, ‘it is all about creativity. And that was on display on Saturday afternoon. Composition in music, theatre production, writing, etc. Job postings for software engineers are down 65% in the U.S. over the past year. The unemployment rate for software engineers with a college degree is twice the overall unemployment rate. So the colleges that have not emphasized creativity are stuffed. Pembroke is well positioned’.
And by ‘Pembroke’ we mean us, you, all of us – wherever we are in our walks of life, we can make a contribution. With your generosity of all magnitudes, you have made Pembroke a better place than ever to start and continue that journey. Thank you. While the number who could be present on 10th May was regrettably limited, there is no limit to the welcome to be found in the College by any and all of those who want to be part of Pembroke’s next chapter.
Pembroke Choir, conducted by Anna Lapwood, performs ‘A Hymn for St Cecilia’, composed by Lucy Walker.
Jack Thorne and Tim Morris in conversation.
Mike Payne in conversation with Dave Dolby, Ioan Allen, and David Robinson.
Pembroke Plus… Supporting our Students in ‘Interesting Times’
Robert Mayhew, Senior Tutor
As Senior Tutor, I find that my phone well knows what interests me such that it feeds me a steady diet of stories about student wellbeing and mental health. Or, more accurately given their frequency, I am asked to gorge on said diet on a daily basis. Stepping back, there seem to be two general genres of articles in the press about this topic. First, those catastrophizing about a crisis in the mental health of young adults and diagnosing its causes. Second, those broadly suggesting that this age group needs to buck up, or, to use their favoured and often contentless term, show more ‘resilience’.
But what if there were a middle way? Accepting that there is a real problem here, and leaving it to the relevant academic and clinical disciplines to work out why (much of which work is being led within this University as I write), can a university both develop proactive programmes to assist young people as they navigate their first taste of independence and simultaneously offer targeted, supportive interventions for those in real need? Since 2021, the University of Cambridge has been engaged in an ambitious five-year student support change programme trying to address both sides of this issue and I have been involved in several of the workflows this has entailed.
The University’s efforts in modernising how it supports students throw into stark relief the question of what colleges should do moving forward. Simply put, the era of colleges having a nurse to deal with cuts, falls, and burns is probably a thing of the past as that’s not where the clinical need predominantly lies for this generation of young adults. Some colleges will simply take up the levels of support provided by the central University. But Pembroke is known throughout Cambridge for the especial care it has for its students, and we are determined to offer what I call ‘Pembroke Plus’ to retain a reputation of which we are justly proud. In other words, we want to offer support to students within their College community above and beyond anything offered by the University. We also want it to be based in Pembroke itself as the College is the prime source of identity and kinship for our students. Support provided closer to home, we think, is more likely to succeed.
Key to this vision is Pembroke’s appointment of a new Head of Student Wellbeing. The new appointee will be clinically trained and will design with me a health and wellbeing strategy for the College as a whole. This strategy will place Pembroke ahead of the curve with respect to other colleges in working through the question of the support we offer and how it relates to the new landscape of student provision at university level. The Head of Student Wellbeing will both triage Pembroke students to other services and offer direct support to students in extreme need. This will address those in crisis, because there’s no getting around the fact that the context of highly talented students seeking to realise exceptional academic achievements within the rigours of Cambridge’s intense calendar is a recipe that creates considerable pressure.
Where in most universities such students end up intermitting or leaving higher education entirely, we believe that targeted support offered at the local level within the College itself can have a transformative impact and allow vulnerable students to flourish academically and personally. We need to be clear as well that the cohort of students with extreme pastoral needs is disproportionately skewed towards those from less economically and
educationally advantaged backgrounds, those who are disabled and care experienced, and those from ethnically less well represented groups. As such, the support we are offering goes hand in glove with the successful drive by our Admissions team to widen access to Cambridge and to Pembroke.
Beyond crisis intervention, however, the Head of Student Wellbeing will also build a programme to assist students as they transition from home and school to the independent living and learning environment of university. The programme will be wide-ranging, including sessions on networking and building social confidence on the one hand, but also some of the basics of cooking and finance as well! This will work alongside the established system of pastoral tutoring with which you will be familiar. In other words, the ambition here is to extend and deepen the ‘education’ we offer in a wider sense of the term than we normally deploy in Cambridge, the intention being to build confidence, life skills and, yes, although I dislike the term, ‘resilience’.
This new role in Pembroke has already been generously funded for the next five years by a group of donors who have a longstanding interest in student health and wellbeing. These individuals have thoughtfully wanted to hold the College (and particularly myself!) to account about how we support Pembroke students, and I am enormously grateful to them. I hope others who read about Pembroke’s strategic initiative here will want to join this band of donors such that we can endow the position in perpetuity. As we have seen the stunning spaces of the Mill Lane project topping out this academic year, so the College can pivot towards supporting the community who are privileged to live in and use those spaces for life and learning.
If Pembroke can enable and empower its students to build life skills as well as intellectual acumen, we will be cultivating the next generation to contribute to our world and the challenges it faces, something that’s at the heart of our charitable and educative mission as a College. Now, that’s a notion of resilience I would want to read more about the next time my phone pings.
Robert Mayhew
Elemental Poetry Cambridge
Last year I reported on the ongoing writing Masterclasses focused on narrative prose led by Richard Beard (1985) and friends and enabled by the generosity of Nicola Riley. This year has been at least as exciting, indeed dramatic, for writing at Pembroke.
At the opening of our Mill Lane development in May a constellation of our internationally renowned makers for stage and screen returned for an afternoon of conversations, which I hope will inspire a series of events for students. Now I bring news of a third brilliant writing initiative at Pembroke and Cambridge – and an invitation.
In 2018, Dr Daryl Ogden (1992) and Professor Tabitha Sparks began supporting poetry events in Pembroke: a series of richly enjoyable readings and occasional workshops. In 2022, the poet, publisher, and author of Bowieland: Peter Carpenter (1976) joined a conversation Robert Macfarlane (1994) and I had in the Old Library about Ted Hughes (1951), wild fish, and wild water. Over dinner Peter offered to return; the workshop he subsequently led for Pembroke’s student poets was electrifying. Everyone there loved it. Peter’s writing prompts and exercises made it surprisingly easy: our writers felt freed, at once, to write, to take risks, to make discoveries, try things, find or rediscover a voice.
In 2023 Peter introduced me to his wife Amanda. She and Peter founded Worple Press, and she runs the leading environmental sustainability consultancy Achill Legal. She also hosts Planet Pod. An episode on ‘Britain’s Troubled Waters’, with the nature writer Amy-Jane Beer and scourge of water companies Feargal Sharkey, aired just before both attended a Hughes-inspired conference on chalk streams here at Pembroke and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. And last year, just as Dr Ogden and Professor Sparks extended their support for Poetry at Pembroke for another five years, Peter was in touch again with an idea
Elemental Poetry Cambridge, and it combines two passions. One is for poetry, the other for the environment. Its tag line? New Poetry from Cambridge for the Planet. Elemental seeks to grow a culture where creative thinking and feeling through language is welcomed, encouraged, alongside and in dialogue with the study of literature, or with the life of the city and county; and then it seeks to spread the word, through annual anthologies of new writing,
one each for the next five years, each devoted to one of the five classical elements.
As Peter has proved in years of tutoring for the Arvon Foundation – Ted Hughes was its first President – as well as in his career as a teacher, poetry can be nurtured; poets of any age can grow. But Arvon works through week-long residential courses; Elemental Poetry through free workshops. We want anyone to feel they can come along, plunge in. ‘Don’t get it right. Write!’ And after those first exhilarating minutes of free writing, there should be a sense of purpose, an indication and support for how poems as well as poets can grow, experiment with form and vision. Try a cinquain; ‘Change the lens’; reimagine a favourite place. Be inspired by poems introduced as exemplars. Workshop attendees are encouraged but by no means obliged to share their work, read it aloud. But they also know that, come the summer, there’s a chance to see that work, or poems it prompts, or poems that have surfaced by other means, in an Elemental anthology, the first themed for Water, published by Worple, distributed nationally but available through Poetry at Pembroke too, with its Cambridge launch in our Auditorium. Cycles of workshops leading to subsequent Elementals: Earth, Fire, Air, Ether will follow every year to 2029.
As expected, the response has been overwhelming. Already we’re working closely with half a dozen local schools, state and independent, sharing Peter’s writing course, welcoming writers from years seven to thirteen. Their excitement, as well as the quality of their work, has been palpable, and moving; they and their teachers want more. So do students and other adults from Cambridge and well beyond. Anyone with a live connection to the city is welcome. In February, a senior conservationist wrote his first poem at a workshop in the David Attenborough Building. You can find other feedback at https:// elementalpoetrycambridge.org.
After the first workshop held in my beautiful study, once Thomas Gray’s room, a number of Elemental poets came together, convened by a Pembroke PhD student who’d just written her first villanelle; joined by participants at a subsequent workshop, the group now meets there fortnightly. A community is beginning to flourish. Writing groups across and beyond the city are in touch. Peter meets individuals for advice sessions the morning after the workshop, to discuss work in progress before it’s submitted for Elemental: Water at the end of May. And he’s recently recorded writing prompts for those who can’t make the workshops.
Now the invitation. Poetry at Pembroke is seeking partners for Elemental. We want to diversify, expand the Elemental stable of poets. We want to fund travel and accommodation costs and find the fees that freelance writers whose words already move earth, walk on air, kindle fire, net ether, will need to join Peter, lead workshops of their own, advise individuals, record writing prompts, stay in Pembroke. We want to advertise in local media, reach experienced writers and potential writers we haven’t yet, and support the maintenance and development of our beautiful website. We’d love to respond positively to requests to deliver workshops in Ely and across Cambridgeshire, and from a Pembroke composer to provide choral settings for our poems. Future anthologies will list our supporters. Every little helps. If you’re interested, please get in touch: poetry@pem.cam.ac.uk will find us!
Mark Wormald on an exciting new literary venture
Mark Wormald
The Legacy of Filmmaker Humphrey Jennings
Fred Rowson (2007), Jennings’s great-grandson
In 2017, the British Film Institute (BFI) marked the 75th anniversary of Humphrey Jennings (1926) and Stewart McAllister’s iconic work of wartime propaganda, Listen To Britain (1942), with a competition for young filmmakers inviting them to submit short documentaries about life in modern Britain. The resulting films, screened on London’s South Bank, ranged from animation to spoken word poetry, charting the lives of Welsh taxi drivers, online content creators, a therapy dog, refugees, workers in a Glasgow bus garage, and more. These works were impressive, as was the BFI’s curatorial efforts in corralling a genuinely kaleidoscopic range of modern British experience.
Leaving aside the individual merit of each film, the project overall fell short – fascinatingly short, I think –of capturing the spirit or even the intention of Jennings and McAllister’s original work. Far from being the fault of the filmmakers themselves, the shortfall is down to a chasm of difference, nearly a century in the making, that speaks to the way our culture as well as our preference for perspective have changed.
The original Listen to Britain was far from a personal, key-hole view of a single life or community. In fact, it was in many ways impersonal, not about characters or individuals, but about glimpses, textures, stolen moments woven together in an endlessly shifting tapestry that owes its biggest debt to the surrealist imperative of juxtaposition to create unexpected meaning. In that respect, it was true Cinema – the tracking of emotion across time – in a way that the BFI’s 75th anniversary response wasn’t, however artfully constructed and programmed.
You could argue that today our lives are far more fragmented and inward-looking than those in the Britain of 1942. But given that most of us weren’t living then, and that life in wartime Britain may well have felt deeply fragmented and uncertain, I think this cultural instinct speaks to the power of our national myths about the time, and the power of Jennings and McAllister’s work – the fact that, at the height of the war, they were able to conjure a sense of mass community and connection that may or may not have existed but, for the purpose of the British state that funded the film, needed to exist.
Far From The Madding Crowd and H.E. Bates’s The Purple Plain. I remember my grandmother (Jennings’s daughter) telling me about him taking her to see The Third Man on its release in 1949 and afterwards praising Carol Reed’s combination of verité location work with pulp narrative momentum.
We don’t know what he might have done with those adaptations, but watching Listen To Britain feels like a far more modern experience than watching, say, American wartime propaganda, or even many British or Hollywood movies of the era. The use of sound, music and sideways leaps of intention mean that Jennings’s opus would sit comfortably alongside later British filmmakers such as Nicholas Roeg, Lynne Ramsay, Andrea Arnold, Jonathan Glazer, and Adam Curtis.
It’s an oft-cited bit of trivia that Curtis’s father, Martin Curtis, worked with Jennings. This connection is often raised with Curtis in interviews and quickly side-stepped, perhaps because the visual approach of both filmmakers’ works can sometimes seem irresistibly similar, even if that feels a bit superficial (but do re-watch Listen to Britain and imagine a soft voice saying ‘and then, suddenly, everything changed’ – it works). However I’d point out another potential connection, which is Curtis’s not infrequent citation of his enjoyment of TikTok, and how that app’s algorithm, at its best, can serve up the most unexpected, disconnected pieces of content, snapshots of random life that do feel like something out of a Jennings film or, even more so, a Mass Observation exercise.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that Jennings, an inveterate experimenter and someone who delighted in creating new things with new technology, might have loved today’s online visual ecosystem, the unscripted snippets of people’s lives that are out there for viewing. He would at least have been irresistibly intrigued by the possibilities of this medium.
Listen to Britain is a film made with a fearlessness and hunger that still feels very modern and, I think, spookily relevant. Along with Jennings’s other great works (The Silent Village and Fires Were Started were among his best), I can’t help but wonder what a Jennings film of the ’60s, ’70s or even ’80s might have looked like, in a future where the works we now consider to be his canon might have been his preliminary sketches. This type of speculative exercise is uniquely magnetised towards Jennings because of the nature of his death. That’s the anniversary we’re now marking. 75 years since he died accidentally, in Greece, whilst scouting locations for a new film.
We know about his gestating plans to move into narrative filmmaking with adaptations of Hardy’s
There is also, finally, something very modern about Jennings’s ability to let his artistic instincts flourish within the structures of commissioned work – be it documentaries, or information films. It isn’t hard to imagine him bringing his eye to bear on advertising filmmaking as it developed through the second half of the 20th century. There’s a passage in the biography by Kevin Jackson (1974)* depicting him gleefully experimenting with the viscosity of goo that he was using to film a short industrial information film about oil, or fuel or something similar. His crew and clients were apparently surprised and impressed by how deeply he threw himself into it, and I remember reading it and being struck at this image – the joy he found in creating, even when the assignment might be considered dull, rote or beneath him.
He took his chances where he found them. He understood that the opportunities available to him might be numbered. And he used those chances to create work which is, I think, yet to be bettered.
Fred Rowson is a filmmaker based between London and New York, and is currently in pre-production for his debut feature.
* Kevin Jackson wrote on Jennings in the 2013 Martlet
Dr Alice Raw is a historian of late medieval gender and sexuality. In 2024, she joined Pembroke as a Mark Kaplanoff Research Fellow. Her first monograph, Reading for Pleasure: Women’s Sexuality in Later Medieval England, is under preparation. Her principal publications include: ‘Life After Leyrwite: Sexual Subjectivity on the English Manor c.1270-1330,’ The Fourteenth Century XIII (2025); and ‘Gender and Protest in Later Medieval England, c.1400-1550,’ English Historical Review 136 (2021).
A Cohabiting Couple of Medieval Cambridge
Alice Raw, Research Fellow, discusses her work on medieval sexuality and marriage
On 20 February 1377, Marie de St Pol wrote her will, in which she asked to be buried in the habit of a Franciscan sister at Denny Abbey just outside of Cambridge. She had by that time lived for over fifty years as a widow, free to do with her wealth as she liked. For Marie, of course, this included founding the Hall of Valence-Marie, almost immediately known as Pembroke College.
Populate medieval Cambridge in your mind, and you might think of the scholars, students, and Franciscan friars who studied and worked in Marie’s college. Perhaps a student walks along Trumpington Street to visit St Bene’t’s Church, the oldest building in the city and even in 1377 a construction from another age. St Bene’t’s, then and now, was a University building. It symbolized the religious and intellectual authority of a select few men, and enabled those men to oversee the moral regulation of the town.
Moral regulation included all sorts of things, but one of the most common issues brought to the regular church court was sex that happened outside of marriage. Sometimes these cases were brought by one individual against another, but not always – sometimes, it was ‘known to the court by public fame’. In other words, if it was obvious enough to enough people, you might find yourself before the church court.
I am writing a book about why I think it is possible to read between the lines of the records of punishment to build a picture of people’s sexual lives beyond their regulation: a far messier picture of relationships that followed their own trajectory despite institutional and social pressures.
Joan Souster and Thomas Barber, for example, lived together in the parish of St Bene’t’s. It’s possible, but far from certain, that their surnames reflect their trades: a seamstress, and a barber. They were unmarried, and had lived together for some time when, in February 1376, they were called to the church court because their relationship was publicly known. From the proceedings, there is a small window onto a non-marital relationship of some duration. We know of similar arrangements across medieval Europe because couples were sometimes ordered to marry, or sought legal protections for their children, or asked for
penance. Impediments such as holy orders, blood ties, or previous relationships all factored in. While marriage was the religious ideal, many couples chose, for one reason or another, not to solemnise their unions in this way.
For Joan and Thomas, there was no specific impediment as defined by the church. Ironically, they only come into institutional view because they had finally become engaged – maybe. Four months earlier, they had been amongst the revellers at Stourbridge Fair. Joan and Thomas claimed they had gotten engaged at the fair and then slept together. For a church court, this would amount to an irregular but just-about-acceptable contract to marry. But Thomas complicated the matter:
Thomas denies this contract, but says he contracted with her in the following way. Prior to the said feast, Thomas had told Joan to leave. Later he learned that she intended to go away, which made him so unhappy he became suicidal. When Joan insisted on leaving the country, Thomas tearfully appealed to her saying, ‘Joan if you will stay here, I will betroth you.’ She replied she would stay. He said, ‘I promise to have you’. She was pleased. Thomas admits that he had intercourse with Joan both before and after the promise, but not with the intention of marrying her.
For Joan, marriage may have been a desired outcome, but a sexual relationship of some duration preceded this. She did not end the relationship over the lack of a marriage promise; it was Thomas that told her to go. Then, seemingly, on calling his bluff Joan used their split to affect a more secure arrangement (a contract to marry).
Thomas’ recounting of his own feelings served to undermine the validity of the contract, as one important standard medieval marriages were held to was the free intention of both parties. By claiming that he had said one thing but thought another, Thomas was using a classic defence. But the cohabitation and physical relationship alongside the promise stacked the odds against him. In March, the couple were forced into an oath called sub pena nubendi, whereby if you had sex again, you were held to be legally married. What was designed as a tidy (if coercive) practice to relabel fornication as marriage here opened a whole new can of worms.
Over a year after their alleged engagement, Thomas and Joan were called back to the church court because they were still having sex, but were not married and were no longer cohabiting. It was easier to argue that you were simply fornicating if you were not living together. By this time, they had faced a set of attempted compulsions, fines, and beatings. Another year later, they were judged to be married, but even then, Thomas appealed. As no further judgement was given, it is hard to say whether they ended up together or not, and/or married or not.
Such cases interest me because in the absence of any actual impediment, all we are left with is the resistance of individuals to the authority which we understand to have had an almost total control over the sexual lives over the people of medieval England. Of course, we have so little of the circumstances that reconstructing their motivations is very difficult. But what can be said is that across a series of accusations, counter-accusations, punishments, and two attempts at forcing a marriage, Joan and Thomas had a sexual relationship that neither was quite willing to relinquish.
Pembroke House: 140 Years of Building Community
Juliette Agyeman (2021) on the charity’s work in Walworth, where she grew up
Ihave spent the most formative years of my life in Walworth, a neighbourhood in South East London, where I completed my secondary education and went to sixth form. During the half an hour walk to school I would walk past various shops – Algerian cafes, with their windows full of sweet pastries and flatbreads, Latin American restaurants with salsa playing, and numerous chicken & chips shops which fed all the school children after school. Although this may sound a mishmash to some, Walworth has always been a place where I feel at home.
Being accepted into Pembroke College and moving to Cambridge placed me in a very different environment. There were elements of Cambridge which reminded me of Walworth, particularly Cambridge’s Market Square and the smells from the food stalls, as well as the warmth of the people that I met during my time at Pembroke. I didn’t experience the same ease of what I had taken for granted in secondary school, and at times I certainly found myself struggling to keep up with the workload, but in Cambridge – as in Walworth – I met different sets of people who have helped to shape me.
In my final year at Pembroke, an advertisement for a trainee position at a charity based in Walworth dropped into my inbox, and this was the first time I had heard about Pembroke House. I had been looking for a way to reintegrate into my local community after University and it all seemed strangely serendipitous. I applied, and in September 2024 I returned to Walworth to began my role as Pembroke Trainee.
Pembroke House was founded in 1885 by students from Pembroke College who, as part of a larger movement of ‘settlement houses’, felt that the best way to tackle inequality would involve embedding themselves in the local community and working alongside residents to foster social change. They established a small sharedhouse, a youth club, a chapel for worship, and a host of community programmes.
When I arrived at Pembroke House preparations were underway for the Annual General Meeting which seemed like a great opportunity for me to get stuck in and learn about the charity. I was responsible for logistics, coordinating catering and room setup, organising the run-through and also the social media communications advertising the event. It was wonderful to see everyone –staff, trustees, and the local community – come together and reflect on the work that Pembroke House has done over the past year. At this AGM, the team also introduced the pillars that would support the work of Pembroke House going forward.
During my time at Pembroke House I have been able to see the pillars in action. I have spent some time in the ‘Walworth Living Room’, Pembroke House’s openaccess community space, where community members connect over meals and activities. A regular called John and I have become firm friends as he often recounts his l ife going to dances in the ’60s and never hides his disdain for my lack of knowledge of ’50s music icons. I don’t think I would have met John out and about, but listening to him share his stories and sharing mine in return is emblematic of the special connections that occur within the charity.
At the AGM, I heard about the unique connections that people hold with Pembroke House. Some attendees
began visiting Pembroke House as a child in the 1960’s. Many had known of it during their time at Pembroke College and spent time living in the ‘residency’ – our sixbedroom shared house. Some local residents first came into contact with the charity through our programmes, the Pembroke Academy of Music, the subsidised music tuition programme, or through our weekly lunch club. Others knew Pembroke House through COVID when the buildings were transformed into an emergency food hub. Despite all these different connections, they are united by a deep-rooted pride and sense of belonging in the charity.
As a Pembroke Trainee, I have had the privilege of getting to know a place that has already given so much to me in an even more profound way. I have been able to go back to locations in Walworth that I would walk past and actually enter and get to know the people in these spaces. I finally tasted the Algerian sweets and pastries that I had walked past everyday! Through the Walworth Living Room I’ve been able to reconnect with people in the area, bonding over our individual experiences of Walworth and the many changes that have occurred in the local area.
Pembroke House has had a transformative impact on me. It has changed the way I interact with people and it has changed my relationship with Pembroke College, allowing me to appreciate the differences between Cambridge and Walworth but also their similarities. Pembroke House is a place full of warmth and a place that has a knack for creating connections that change people.
This year, it is celebrating 140 years of such connections in Walworth. We will be celebrating this through our new 140th Campaign, highlighting a longstanding history of the charity in Walworth – so please do take the opportunity to get involved, and if you have the chance, pop round and see the magic of Pembroke House in person. Words do not do it justice, it is to be experienced!
Juliette Agyeman read History at Pembroke from 2021 to 2024. She is currently undertaking a traineeship at Pembroke House and is exploring a career in the voluntary sector or in teaching.
The Walworth Living Room, a project by Pembroke House
Behind the Scenes of Diplomacy
Akshar Abhyankar (2019) on interning at the United Nations in New York with Pembroke’s Eric Idle Scholarship
Every other year, Pembroke offers one lucky graduate the chance to intern for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in the Security Council team at the UK Mission to the United Nations (UN) in New York. After submitting my application and being successfully interviewed by the Master and Senior Tutor, I moved to New York at the end of August 2023 armed with two suitcases barely under the maximum weight allowance. By the end of December, I was left with some of the most unique, and occasionally bizarre, experiences of my life.
On my first day, I joined my supervisor to witness the Security Council in action for a meeting to renew the Mali sanctions regime, following the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping force in Mali one month prior. This was ostensibly supposed to be an open-and-shut meeting; it was widely expected that the Council would approve the renewal of the sanctions regime. Instead, I witnessed a back-and-forth tussle on Security Council procedure between the ambassadors of Russia and the United States, with the meeting eventually resulting in Russia’s vetoing the renewal. My first day at the UN showed me that no one day would be like any other.
Soon after, I was thrown into office-wide preparation for the UN General Assembly (UNGA) High Level week, when presidents, ministers and their advisers pour into Manhattan for back-to-back conferences, conventions, and
diplomats the reasons why China had been reluctant to vote ‘no’ alongside Russia in two votes earlier in 2023.
At other points, my time in UNGA felt quite bizarre. On one weekday evening I found myself trapped in the middle of First Avenue as President Erdoğan’s motorcade prepared to leave from the Turkish Consulate General. On another occasion, I ran through the UN Headquarters to deliver a sandwiches and snacks to our Deputy Prime Minister and his team ahead of an afternoon of meetings. One time I even found myself standing absent-mindedly in the middle of a hallway as President Zelenskyy and his sizeable entourage of guards and advisers came, quite literally, marching towards me at full pace, giving me barely moments to dive out of the way.
Above all, participating in the cross-Mission effort to deliver an intricate UNGA programme was incredibly exciting. I often found myself sitting in the UK’s seat in the General Assembly and taking notes on world leaders’ speeches which would later be shared across the Foreign Office. This, I noted, was not particularly enticing for diplomats who had become accustomed to the United Nations. However, I relished the opportunity to hear and report on world leaders’ speeches in person – William Ruto of Kenya, Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, and Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, to name a few.
After UNGA, most of my time was dominated by the most pressing issues facing diplomats around the world: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, civil war in Sudan and, after 7 October, renewed brutal conflict in Gaza and the Middle East more broadly. One of my proudest moments was commissioning contributions from across Whitehall on a speech to be delivered by the UK’s Deputy Ambassador at the UN, James Kariuki. This was distinctly humbling and frequently emotional.
On one hand, it was an immense privilege to witness high-profile diplomatic exchange when accompanying the UK Ambassador, Barbara Woodward, and to send out a meeting record to Foreign Office posts across the world. On the other hand, I often compared my relative peace and fortune – as a Cambridge graduate interning at the United Nations – with the plight of millions around the globe facing extreme hunger, forced displacement, and armed conflict who were the subjects of my day-to-day work.
That said, I did not leave New York a cynic. Upon returning home, armed with two suitcases over the maximum weight allowance, I often found myself reflecting on my time at the UN. I witnessed the robust determination of FCDO colleagues who worked to uphold the integrity of the global multilateral system. I saw how the whole UN system – over 190 member states, numerous UN agencies, and countless civil society organisations – could flexibly adapt to face rapidly transforming crises. Most importantly, I saw how much intense diplomacy takes place behind the scenes, even between friend and foe. Regardless of voting differently on matters, my colleagues spent every day engaging with friendly and competing nations to build consensus on the most urgent issues facing the world.
Outside of work, I made some of the best friendships with UN interns from around the globe and tried my best to experience everything New York has to offer. Having returned to the UK, I remain immensely grateful to Eric Idle and Pembroke College for providing such a unique opportunity to its graduates, and I encourage every finalist to apply.
Akshar Abhyankar read History and Modern Languages from 2019-2023 and is completing a law conversion course to begin training as a solicitor at Slaughter and May.
Gossip
From the Gossip Editor
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The Editor
Pembroke Annual Gazette Pembroke College Cambridge, CB2 IRF Or by email to him at: njm33@cam.ac.uk
1961
Colin Richards writes: ‘I parked my bicycle in College one morning in June 1964. It was stolen. Does anyone know the whereabouts of V 691? It was a much-prized museum piece then and would be even more valuable as a museum piece sixty years on.’
1965
David Carrington writes: ‘After a Foundress’ Feast, I made a nostalgic visit to the back wall. In the days when gates were locked at night and undergraduates had no keys, colleges had informal night entrances. To get into Pembroke, we climbed the back wall using the lamp post, helped by an old bicycle [Ed., maybe that of Colin Richards? – see the entry above] chained to it, walked along the top, and descended via the bike shed roof and bins. The evidence of my footprints on the wall and roof is gone, but not from my body. The pressure of bracing between the wall and the lamp post on the way in, and the hard landings on the pavement on the way out left their mark on my joints. My future wife, Elizabeth, and I frequently engaged in nocturnal movements in and out together. I’m pleased to say she’s still looking after me while I recover from hip and knee operations. I wonder if giving gate keys to subsequent generations could reduce their need for joint replacement surgery.’
1968
Mike Baynham writes: ‘I am currently an editor with the magazine of refugee and migrant writing other side of hope (othersideofhope.com) where I edit a multilingual poetry supplement entitled ‘other tongue/mother tongue’. I have recently collaborated with translator Jiyar Homer to publish with Arc Publications a bilingual chapbook of the poetry of the iconic contemporary Kurdish poet Dilawar Karadaghi, My
Country’s Hair Turned White. My translation of the zejal poetry of the Moroccan poet Adil Latefi won second prize in the 2023 Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize’.
1969
Ian Crammond writes: ‘At the tender age of 73, and driving my 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280SL, I am the reigning Champion Driver in the 2024 HRCR Historic Road Rally Championship. It’s the second time I have won it, the first being in 2018. Around 60 crews compete in each event of this popular series, which is decided over a series of at least eight rallies around the UK from March to November. I created and ran the prestige Three Castles Trial classic car rally (https://three-castles.co.uk/), which attracts a worldwide entry, and recently completed thirtyfive years as a leading external creative consultant to Diageo, specialising in high-end single malt whiskies… n.b. I am not just a petrolhead; my daily vehicle is a fully electric car...’
Paul FitzPatrick writes: ‘I have been awarded a PhD in Contextual Theology by the University of Manchester for my study of Doncaster Conversation Club, exploring the possibilities of the solidarity of others in an asylum dispersal area, built around “quiet defiance”, “rightful presence” and “shaken welcome”’.
1978
David Knox writes: ‘I was awarded an MSc in Social Business & Entrepreneurship, after 14 months of part-time study, by the London School of Economics (LSE). LSE has also appointed me an Alumni Ambassador for the course (https://tinyurl.com/5ypckvaz). A feature of this course is its connection with LSE’s 100x Impact Accelerator (https:// tinyurl.com/53kdj3ez). LSE describe the course as “an antidote to MBAs”!’
1981
Chris Birks writes: ‘After 40 years working in finance, I am now pursuing a second (totally unpaid!) career in academia. I am hoping to submit my doctoral thesis by the middle of 2025, having been studying for a part-time History DPhil at Lincoln College, Oxford, since 2020. I have been spending quite a lot of time in the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College and have really enjoyed my visits to Cambridge, including Pembroke and admiring the new Mill Lane development’.
1982
Ian Carter writes: ‘As Vice President of the States of Alderney and a member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, I and 29 other Commonwealth Parliamentarians assembled for two days of intensive training in UK election law and practices before splitting into eight teams observing the UK General Election. My team comprised colleagues from Kenya, St Lucia, and Malawi, and we observed the election process in Birmingham Ladywood, a diverse inner-city constituency. On polling day, we split into two groups and started at 5:30 am, watching the setting up of polling stations according to regulations. Sixteen polling stations were observed for half an hour each over the course of the day. Reflections include the trust that the electorate has in the system, the challenges for some members of society to access their vote and their desire to ensure it is cast, the incredible professionalism of the Returning Officer and his team, the potential unpleasant power of social media in campaigning, the passion the Gaza debate generated, and the many ways a voter can spoil their ballot paper’.
1985
Andy Storch writes: ‘After over 30 years in central Reading, where we raised our three children, I have given up my criminal defence law firm and gone north to be Rector of the Hambleden Valley group of churches from 1 September 2024. My wife Janice (née Chambers, also 1985) has gone south to Farnborough Sixth Form College where she heads the maths department. Commuting is a strain! When I arrived here, as priest in charge, my first job was to conduct the marriage ceremony for my own daughter, who was possibly the firstborn to a Pembroke couple!’
1997
Amy Gutcher (née Fuller) writes: ‘A group of us who matriculated in 1997 were able to attend High Table in November 2024 and also experienced staying in the new Dolby Court! It was nice to reminisce, as we were the first cohort to live in Foundress Court back in 1997. At dinner were me, Camilla Ibison (née Jones), Anna Ferguson, Tim Sharpe, Jon Abbott, James Ford and Tony Coleman. Many thanks to the staff at Pembroke who made us so welcome, and especially the Porters, who weren’t as scary as I remember them!’
1998
Jak Kypri writes: ‘We have had another daughter called Alessandra Kypri born 19/12/23 along with her slightly older sister Isabella. Mum and daughters doing well. Dad frazzled and sleep deprived’.
1999
Aaron Rosen writes: ‘I began a new role recently as Executive Director of The Clemente Course in the Humanities (http://www.clementecourse. org/), a not-for-profit delivering free college courses to underserved communities across the United States, with affiliates around the world’. Aaron remains a visiting professor at King’s College London, and recently founded his own non-profit contemporary gallery on the Maine coast: The Parsonage Gallery (http://www. parsonagegallery.org/).
Beth Singler writes: In 2024, I published two books, Religion and AI: An Introduction, with Routledge, and the Cambridge Companion to Religion and AI, edited with Fraser Watts, with Cambridge University Press. I am currently the Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland, co-director of their University Research Priority Program in Digital Religion(s) and a part of the directorate of the UZH’s Digital Society Initiative. My husband, Carl, and I, along with our nowteenage son, Henry, are very much enjoying the lakes and mountains of Zurich.
2001
Victoria Robinson (née Skinner) writes: I and my husband David are delighted to announce the arrival of our daughter Rosaline Anne Robinson (Rosie) on 23rd June 2024.
Poet’s Corner
Sea Stones
Freshwater East, Barafundle, Broadhaven. Re-remembered place-names glisten again, sea-wet, sea-darkened, smooth as bone in our open palms – tongues of sandstone, skimmers of slate, veterans that we hold as tokens of our blessings, each chosen from giving sand, clinging marram, or tide-pools. Free. I think to hoard them, but Zoë, my daughter, then aged three, already the conservationist, puts them in her plastic bucket, and places them back, as close as possible to where they had been.
An early version of this poem first appeared in the journal Tears In The Fence
Peter Carpenter (1976) has had seven collections of poetry published, as well as essays and articles on a diverse variety of topics (from T.S. Eliot’s poetry to the photography of Boris Mikhailov). Work has appeared and been praised in journals including the TLS and PN Review. His chapter on creative writing appeared in the OUP Handbook of British and Irish Poetry, and he is a tutor for Arvon. Bowieland: Walking in the Footsteps of David, published by Monoray in March, has been praised as a ‘sublime time-travelling quest’ (Tiffany Murray), and an ‘inventive and innovative slice of psychogeography’ (The Observer). Peter lives near Oxford with his wife, Amanda, a sustainability activist. Together they co-direct independent micro-press, Worple.
