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| Outside King's College |
That, of course, is not to say that Cambridge is a backwater or old fashioned. The city and its surrounding environs are increasingly filled with cutting edge scientific research institutes and laboratories. As we sat on the bus taking us to the centre of the city from the Park and Ride car park at Madingly we passed an endless number of hi-tech establishments their names internationally known for scientific research and advancement. But as one nears the centre and the streets narrow, recalling the city’s Mediaeval beginnings, the hi-tech buildings and modern University colleges slowly give way to the ancient colleges that comprise the University – their names synonymous with the great names and occasions of our island’s history. Cambridge is a place to quietly inspire – where one can be reminded and feel proud of the nation’s history and at the same time be encouraged by the knowledge that modern Cambridge is still doing what is has always done – furthering knowledge and being at the cutting edge of academic achievement.
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| Darwin at Christ's College |
As we drove into the city centre we passed a bus stop where one could catch a bus to Oxford – the other great University city of the England. Oxford, slightly older than Cambridge as a University city and famed for its “dreaming spires”, its Cotswold Stone colleges, and its endless capacity to produce the great leaders of our country has all the attributes that Cambridge has but, for me at least, is not as agreeable as Cambridge. Where Cambridge seems, despite it Mediaeval heritage, forward looking and unpretentious Oxford I find rather claustrophobic, backward looking, pretentious and “touristy”. Whereas Cambridge has a faded elegance, Oxford so often seems rather tawdry; there is a subtle difference. Like Cambridge, Oxford boasts (and maybe exceeds Cambridge in this) a list of the great and good of our nation (and indeed many other nations). But for me, where Oxford’s list of the great and good might be judged to represent the past of our nation Cambridge has consistently represented the future. Oxford’s suffocating atmosphere seems to be about preserving our wonderful past but Cambridge has always, and still is, about making a better tomorrow.
As we passed Christ’s College and popped our heads through
the gate way to admire the beautiful college buildings I noticed on the wall a relief portrait of Charles Darwin a man who changed our
understanding of the human species forever. When we walked from the Fitzwilliam
Museum towards King’s College Pat noticed a blue plaque on the wall of one of
the buildings. It recorded the mathematician Alan Turing who was instrumental
in the invention and development of the computer as well as the man who, using
his early “computer”, cracked the German Enigma Code during the Second World
War. Turing is widely considered to
be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence – his
work during the Second World War caused Churchill
to comment that Turing had shortened the war by about 2 years and thus saved
the lives of millions by his cracking of the secret code.
Sadly, this gentle, nervous, quiet, unassuming but outstandingly brilliant man was also a homosexual – a thing illegal at the time. He was chemically castrated when his condition was discovered by police in Manchester where he lived after the war and as a result of that dreadful punishment he committed suicide in 1954 by eating an apple laced with cyanide. In 2013 he was granted a posthumous Royal Pardon which although a gratifying salve for the national conscience seems to me to be an unfortunate reflection upon our behaviour as human beings towards such a man who had given his country and the world so much. If the Royal Pardon is supposed to reassure us that we are so much wiser and understanding today and that no similarly hateful and ethically bankrupt act could ever occur today in the name of "justice" one only needs to read the pages of right wing and popular tabloids such as the Mail, the Telegraph or the Sun. One would soon realise that the mob can, still today, even in these enlightened times be whipped up into a frenzy with lurid headlines and can subsequently force a government to take actions that would otherwise be judged quite unacceptable. In recent months the clamour for severe punishments and restrictions by right wing newspapers, huge swathes of the population and extremist politicians against refugees, Muslims or economic migrants bears witness to our capacity to hate and pick upon those who are different in body, mind or culture. Alan Turing in his brief, brilliant but tragic life left an enduring legacy from which we each and every one still benefit every minute of every day. A world without computers and all that goes with them would now be quite inconceivable; they are not simple toys to engage us and with which to write trivia on social networking sites or in blogs like this. They govern and impact upon our every waking and sleeping moment in some way or other. Turing was the lynch pin and most important piece of the jigsaw in their development. It is the stuff of legend that his role in the development of computing today is allegedly remembered within the logo of the mighty Apple Corporation. The logo depicting an apple with bite taken out which decorates our I-pads, lap tops and I-phones – the great “must haves” of our generation - is, it often asserted, a silent homage by Apple to Turing and his tragic suicide. Apple neither admit or deny this story, but whatever, it’s a reminder to us of how cruel mankind can be towards those who are different either by choice or birth. Royal Pardons are an inconsequential salve - no more no less - a sticking plaster to cover the misdeeds of our nation and relieve our national conscience but they do little in the end to make us better as a species. As a nation the Royal Pardon's most important value is perhaps to make us all hold our heads in shame - sadly as a look at the Mail, the Telegraph or the Sun will prove, we have not and will not learn the lesson.
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| Alan Turing and the Apple logo that we all know so well |
Sadly, this gentle, nervous, quiet, unassuming but outstandingly brilliant man was also a homosexual – a thing illegal at the time. He was chemically castrated when his condition was discovered by police in Manchester where he lived after the war and as a result of that dreadful punishment he committed suicide in 1954 by eating an apple laced with cyanide. In 2013 he was granted a posthumous Royal Pardon which although a gratifying salve for the national conscience seems to me to be an unfortunate reflection upon our behaviour as human beings towards such a man who had given his country and the world so much. If the Royal Pardon is supposed to reassure us that we are so much wiser and understanding today and that no similarly hateful and ethically bankrupt act could ever occur today in the name of "justice" one only needs to read the pages of right wing and popular tabloids such as the Mail, the Telegraph or the Sun. One would soon realise that the mob can, still today, even in these enlightened times be whipped up into a frenzy with lurid headlines and can subsequently force a government to take actions that would otherwise be judged quite unacceptable. In recent months the clamour for severe punishments and restrictions by right wing newspapers, huge swathes of the population and extremist politicians against refugees, Muslims or economic migrants bears witness to our capacity to hate and pick upon those who are different in body, mind or culture. Alan Turing in his brief, brilliant but tragic life left an enduring legacy from which we each and every one still benefit every minute of every day. A world without computers and all that goes with them would now be quite inconceivable; they are not simple toys to engage us and with which to write trivia on social networking sites or in blogs like this. They govern and impact upon our every waking and sleeping moment in some way or other. Turing was the lynch pin and most important piece of the jigsaw in their development. It is the stuff of legend that his role in the development of computing today is allegedly remembered within the logo of the mighty Apple Corporation. The logo depicting an apple with bite taken out which decorates our I-pads, lap tops and I-phones – the great “must haves” of our generation - is, it often asserted, a silent homage by Apple to Turing and his tragic suicide. Apple neither admit or deny this story, but whatever, it’s a reminder to us of how cruel mankind can be towards those who are different either by choice or birth. Royal Pardons are an inconsequential salve - no more no less - a sticking plaster to cover the misdeeds of our nation and relieve our national conscience but they do little in the end to make us better as a species. As a nation the Royal Pardon's most important value is perhaps to make us all hold our heads in shame - sadly as a look at the Mail, the Telegraph or the Sun will prove, we have not and will not learn the lesson.
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| Remembering Crick & Watson a The Eagle |
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| The Eagle's Blue Plaque |
The list is
endless: people who have changed our world in their respective fields. Fighting our way through a large group of
Japanese tourists, all busily recording their visit on their mobile phone
cameras we popped into Peterhouse College
and enjoyed the Chapel. We
discovered that the Chapel was built by Matthew Wren who was Master of
Peterhouse in the 17th century and the uncle of Christopher Wren who
rebuilt London after the great fire of 1666. Sir Christopher Wren used his uncle’s
ideas when he designed the chapel for another Cambridge College Emmanuel
College and in 1666 adapted many of his uncles plans when he fulfilled the orders of King Charles II following the
the Great Fire of London of 1666 to change the London skyline and “fill the sky over London with great church.”
His design and building of St Paul’s Cathedral still today fulfills that
function, filling the London skyline. In another field, ask anyone on the
planet to name a famous scientist and it wouldn’t be long before the names of
Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawkins are mentioned – two men who lived three
hundred years apart but who have both changed our understanding of science,
astronomy and mathematics. Both are alumni of Cambridge and inextricably
associated with its story. In the arts and literature it is the same ground
breaking narrative: in the twentieth century John Cleese and the other Monty
Python characters, all Cambridge alumni, changed our perception of comedy while
poets like Rupert Brook and Siegfried Sassoon changed our feelings about war as
two of the Great War poets who recorded their horror of the First World War. At
the end of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century a
group of Cambridge friends increasingly had their effect upon the literature
and art establishment and at the same time developed ideas that increasingly
changed the way we operate as individuals and as a society: Virginia Woolf, John Meynard Keynes,
EM Forster , Lytton Stracey and others
became very much the “shakers and movers” of social and intellectual change. As
members of what eventually became known as the Bloomsbury Set their beliefs, ideals,
way of life and intellect very much shaped the world that we inhabit today. All were
alumni of just two Cambridge Colleges – King’s and Trinity.
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| Peterhouse College & Matthew Wren's Chapel |
In all, the
University of Cambridge has provided 92 winners of the Nobel Prize since
1904. Cambridge has provided 29 Nobel prizes in Physics, 26 in Medicine, 22 in
Chemistry, 10 in Economics, 3 in Literature and 2 in Peace; there have been Cambridge recipients of
the award in every one of its categories. Trinity College has the most Nobel
prize winners (32) and the University as a whole has more Nobel Laureates than
any other institution. Whilst it is true that both Harvard and the University
of Columbia record more Nobel prize-winners than Cambridge these two
institutions use a different recording system including the names of prize
winners who might only have had a brief stay of a few months at the university.
Cambridge figures, however, are based only upon full time undergraduates,
researchers or members of academic staff. Cambridge is, and always has been, a place of
change and thinking the unthinkable in order to effect change. Where, for me, Oxford represents the status quo, Cambridge has sought to constantly change the
status quo in every field of
academic, scientific, social and
artistic endeavour.
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| The Fitzwilliam |
We had visited Cambridge for a specific purpose – to enjoy
an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Fitzwilliam is the art
and antiquities museum of the University. It was founded in 1816 with
the legacy of the 7th Viscount FitzWilliam.
It has five departments:
Antiquities; Applied Arts; Coins and Medals; Manuscripts and Printed Books; and
Paintings, Drawings and Prints. There is also the world's largest collection of 16th-century Elizabethan virginal
manuscript music written by some of the most notable composers of the time,
such as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tallis. The Fitzwilliam is a
joy: beautifully set out, exquisite works in wonderful galleries, bright and
modern yet serious and reflecting its important role as a repository of
important academic and artistic items and research. There is a museum shop
filled with gifts to inspire and appreciate (very definitely no “tat” here!)
and a very pleasant restaurant. And......it’s all for free! Had we been asked
for a substantial entry fee I would not have quibbled in any way. As it was,
there was an opportunity to make a donation - £5.00 was the suggested amount; I
was delighted to drop my £5.00 in the box. For the price of one and a half pints
of beer I had enjoyed 2 hours of the best that our nation (and indeed many
other nations and cultures) is capable of. What a bargain!
We had come to
see one special exhibition that the Museum is currently hosting: “The Art & Science of Illuminated
Manuscripts”. The exhibition contains
some of the finest examples of
illuminated scripts of Mediaeval times from this country and beyond – all beautifully displayed, with hi-tech
computer graphics to illustrate and explain the artistic, technical and
historical etails. This was not only an
exhibition with the wow factor of how good it looked but one that
makes us appreciate the unbelievable skill of these masters of a thousand years
ago. How puny it made some of our
efforts today seem – no lap tops, computer programmes or touch screens for
these craftsmen of old. Just their eyes, the skills of their fingers, their
knowledge of the medium - and perhaps a candle to light their way. Looking at each of these
awe inspiring, minutely and beautifully produced works was a reminder of the
huge pride and devotion that these Mediaeval artists possessed . And, to my
eyes at least there was another quality: these were not only brightly and
beautifully decorated pieces of art, nor were they simply bits of religious devotion and the
glorification of God. They were also and often pointed and profound social, historical
and religious commentaries that would not have looked out of place in our
modern political newspaper cartoons.
A couple stand out from the many. One depicts Fate dressed in a long gown. Half of the gown and Fate’s face is a dull muddy brown colour. The other half of the gown and her face is brilliant white. She stands serene and unmoving and around the edge of the illustration are beautifully worked and richly coloured lace works interspersed with cherubim and seraphim. A pretty, ornate illustration one thinks at first glance. But when one looks closer you see that in the brown murk at the side of the brown side of the dress is a ragged family looking gaunt and hungry, their clothes little more than dirty rags whilst on the bright white side Fate’s figure and bathed it its brilliant glow stand a family well fed, richly clothed and filled with joy. The two sides of Fate and a social comment that would not look at all out of place today in the centre page of my daily Guardian newspaper: how our well being is so often determined by the uncertainties of Fate and things outside our control. This thread was continued in another illustration (see picture above). Two pages of a book showed on the left a picture of well fed, well clothed, prosperous huntsmen and on the facing page three skeletons each carrying a scythe – the harbingers of death. And the comment from the skeletons? “Your are what once we were and we are what you will become”. The sub message was clear: “Your wealth and prosperity is meaningless – in the end we all die”. In our celebrity conscious world where material excess, trivial entertainment and having a good time has become the name of the game, the ideal of a good life and the defining goal for so many it is a cautionary tale of some merit.
A couple stand out from the many. One depicts Fate dressed in a long gown. Half of the gown and Fate’s face is a dull muddy brown colour. The other half of the gown and her face is brilliant white. She stands serene and unmoving and around the edge of the illustration are beautifully worked and richly coloured lace works interspersed with cherubim and seraphim. A pretty, ornate illustration one thinks at first glance. But when one looks closer you see that in the brown murk at the side of the brown side of the dress is a ragged family looking gaunt and hungry, their clothes little more than dirty rags whilst on the bright white side Fate’s figure and bathed it its brilliant glow stand a family well fed, richly clothed and filled with joy. The two sides of Fate and a social comment that would not look at all out of place today in the centre page of my daily Guardian newspaper: how our well being is so often determined by the uncertainties of Fate and things outside our control. This thread was continued in another illustration (see picture above). Two pages of a book showed on the left a picture of well fed, well clothed, prosperous huntsmen and on the facing page three skeletons each carrying a scythe – the harbingers of death. And the comment from the skeletons? “Your are what once we were and we are what you will become”. The sub message was clear: “Your wealth and prosperity is meaningless – in the end we all die”. In our celebrity conscious world where material excess, trivial entertainment and having a good time has become the name of the game, the ideal of a good life and the defining goal for so many it is a cautionary tale of some merit.
Having eaten our sandwiches in the grounds of the Fitzwilliam we wandered through Cambridge to enjoy and revisit places that we knew, popping our heads into the gateways of colleges to admire the quadrangles or the chapels. At last we came to what is without doubt the biggest tourist draw in the city – King’s College and the world famous King’s College Chapel, a place we have visited many times and that I have blogged about previously (see blogs for March 5th & April 9th 2014). We sat on the little wall outside Kings College Chapel, Pat eating her ice cream, catching what might be the last of the summer (it was a beautiful day following weeks of hot sunny weather but as I write this blog the weather seems to be slowly changing).
As we sat there, the
modern world was passing us by. Flocks
of Asian tourists all with their cameras clicking and a teenager on a skateboard
passed us. A large group of smartly dressed people each wearing identification
cards around their neck emerged from the main gateway of King’s – many were from Middle Eastern countries,
their skin colour and the hijabs worn by the young women giving them away – they were obviously attending a conference
of some kind in King’s. A family of Spanish people sat on the wall at our side
– parents, children, grandparents, each enjoying their ice creams and
chattering away in their native tongue. An elderly man - looking every inch the Cambridge Don - dressed in a striped
blazer strode along the pavement, a sheaf of papers under his arm and a brief
case in his hand whilst innumerable other people many speaking in foreign
tongues passed – some smartly dressed others in shorts or tee shirts emblazoned
with logos of various kinds. One woman walked past speaking rapidly into her
mobile phone as she went whilst another dressed like a 1960’s hippy with a huge
flopping canvas sunhat pushed a baby’s push chair, both she and the baby
devouring ice creams. A non-stop stream of taxis passed by some depositing
passengers others looking for custom and
across the road from us a rather more sober establishment Ryder & Amies: “Tailors,
Shirtmakers & Gown Makers” - their windows filled with the colours, academic
gowns and academic paraphernalia of Cambridge. Ryder & Amies has stood on
the site and been official supplier of academic dress to the University for
almost 200 years; countless thousands of undergraduates, graduates and academic
staff have stepped through its doors.
Now, the shop jostles with a host of shops all, like Ryder & Amies,
facing the great buildings of King’s College but these more modern businesses
are aimed at satisfying the needs of the million tourists who increasingly flock to
this city each year: Cafe Nero Coffee, the Old Sweet Shoppe, Benet’s Coffee
& Crepes, the Cambridge Chop Shop – and, of course, the ice cream stall
where Pat bought her ice cream cone to enjoy sitting on the wall of King’s.
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| Ryder & Amies - get your gown here! |
And I wondered what
all those great names from Cambridge’s past would have thought if they returned
to sit with us on that wall? They would have recognised King’s and many of the old buildings that
house the shops but what would they have thought aboutt what they saw? The crowds
of tourists the many languages spoken, the intermingling of different cultures
on the street, the tourist attractions, the informal atmosphere and dress of people, the
mobile phones, cameras and skateboards that we take as so much a part of
everyday life today? Henry IV and his Queen Margaret of Anjou who founded
King’s College and the Queens’ College would, I am sure, have found the whole
thing quite alien. I suspect, too, that Henry’s Flemish glass makers Bernard
Flowers and Gaylon Hone – the two finest glass craftsmen of the Mediaeval world
– would, too, have been mightly perplexed as they worked on the magnificent
stained glass of King’s College Chapel. What about the great religious scholar
Erasmus or the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell – I’m sure they might have had
one or two incisive and profound comments to make at what they saw. Or Virginia Woolf and
others of the Bloomsbury Set; I wonder if she would approve of how society has
changed – a change that she and her friends were so instrumental in
bringing about a hundred years ago. And John Cleese and his fellow “Pythons”
they would surely have something pithy to say as would Samuel Pepys have had some pertinent
observation to write in his diary. So, too, poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
John Milton would have some thought provoking comments to make; and what about
the great republican Oliver Cromwell – would he have approved of our modern
society or would his firmly held religious beliefs cause him to decry the
pleasure seeking world that we now inhabit?
Charles Darwin might have seen our modern society as proof of his theory
of evolution but would economist John Meynard Keynes be pleased or disappointed
with our society’s obsession with wealth and with spending? Isaac Newton, ever
the great scientist, would surely be intrigued by the scientific wizardry the
modern gadgets that we all today think nothing of whilst Crick and Watson might
well look warmly at the healthy passers by and feel a certain satisfaction that
their discoveries about DNA might somehow have helped to bring us healthier lives.
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The Bloomsbury Set - moulders of our modern world -
in their Cambridge days
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Trinity College - 32 Nobel Prize Winners have gone through its doors
- and in doing so influenced and changed our world
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But this is the
nature of things and nothing is forever. Things can and do change and Cambridge has shown for almost a thousand
years a continuing capacity to test the notion that what is immutable and uncahnageable can and
will be changed be it in science, the arts, mathematics, literature,
philosophy, society or any other field of human endeavour. If there is one
thing that seems to define this place it is that the great minds that have been
involved and the work that they have done has caused fundamental changes in our
world. Keynes, Crick, Watson, Turing, Darwin, Woolf, Cleese, Erasmus and a
thousand others thought the unthinkable and by doing so brought a new world.
And I think that if any of these great minds had sat on that wall with Pat and
I watching the modern world go by they might have found it all slightly
unbelievable; they might, too, have had some profound and maybe critical comments to
make. But they would, I am sure, have been gratified to know that they had played their part in
building a different and ever changing world and that modern Cambridge is still
carrying out their mission and dreams – challenging the status quo, seeking to extend knowledge and in so
doing deepen mankind’s understanding and relationship with his world.
