MartletNewsletter of Pembroke College CambridgeIssue 19 Spring 2015

Iam writing this year’s piece for the Martlet as I enter thefinal weeks of my Mastership. It has been a rewardingand satisfying eleven years, and I am honoured to have

served as the fifty-third Master of such an extraordinaryacademic community. The Statutes describe the Master as‘being in authority over the Fellowship’ – an historicalsurvival which neither the Master nor the Fellows wouldrecognise today. However, in these times of ‘management’I am drawn to a post that resists job description, with verylittle routine attached to it, and that is shaped by both thelonger-term needs and daily ebb and flow of the life of thecommunity – and where place and people coalesce to createa very special and inspiring ambience. Perhaps the bestcompliment I can pay the College is to acknowledge that ithas provided such a fulfilling alternative to my previouscareer that I have seldom looked back or even felt the needto do so.

I have loved many of the small things, too. Walkingthrough Pembroke’s empty courtyards in the early morning(usually to collect my newspapers – I prefer newsprint toonline) or stepping from an overcrowded TrumpingtonStreet into the still monastic calm of First Court. Thesesimple pleasures are a daily reminder of the power of theplace, and the community it holds, to change the lives of itsmembers. The unalloyed message that I have received fromthe several thousand College Members I have met duringmy tenure is their gratitude and debt to Pembroke for whatit did for them – not just academically but in widening theirperspective on the world and preparing them to meet itschallenges. Pembroke’s reservoirs of influence, affection andsupport do run very deep.

What I also admire so much about the College is theconfidence it has in its future and the respect for its past.Looking forwards from a point of advantage carefully builtover centuries by previous Fellows and Masters better tosee the way ahead, or at least with an improved chance ofdoing so, describes how I have come to value this subtleblend of new and old. Successful stewardship of the Collegehas drawn on deep roots, many contributors and a strongcommunal vision of what should come next – and the wayahead is particularly exciting as I write.

I hope that by the time the Martlet goes to print wemight have signed the agreement with the University topurchase the lease of the Mill Lane site. It will be the largestexpansion of the College since its foundation and willprovide extensive new accommodation (mainly to house thelarger numbers of graduates coming to Pembroke) andmany other facilities that the College lacks – anauditorium, exhibition space, a rare book room,additional offices, improved guest facilities, andso on. Eventually we would hope to connectthe Mill Lane complex to the main Collegesite with a tunnel under TrumpingtonStreet so the enlargedsite would keepits integrityand

cohesion. The Mastership of my successor, Lord Smith ofFinsbury, is going to be dominated by the implementationof this ambitious project and the new DevelopmentCampaign that must accompany it. I wish him every successand I know he will enjoy, as I have done, unstinting supportfrom every sector of the extended Pembroke community;and in conclusion I would like to express my own gratitudeto the whole community for the way I have felt uplifted andenergised by its loyalty and commitment to the College, andby extension to myself personally. It is the aspect ofPembroke that I will probably miss the most.

One other matter of which I would like Martlet readersto take note is Howard Erskine-Hill’s bequest of £100,000to the College to establish an Art Purchase Fund in hisname. Howard loved the visual arts and justly felt thatPembroke, over its long history, had neglected them andthat their greater appreciation needed activeencouragement. The Fine Arts Committee he started hastherefore initiated a collection of ‘works on paper with aliterary or academic theme’, and we now have the financialresources to advance the project. The College hopes thatmembers might make donations of appropriate works, ornotify us if they are aware of something of possible interestcoming up for auction – recent purchases includemanuscripts and illustrations of Ted Hughes’s poems, forexample. An exciting possibility that I have alreadyexplored through our Guggenheim links, is that theGuggenheim Museums might help us mount an exhibitionwhen we are ready to open the MillLane site. The relevance of all this,of course, is that College lifeflows on, and changing Mastersfor the fifty-fourth time addsanother page to the chroniclethat is Pembroke. It hasbeen a wonderful elevenyears – thank you.

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Contents3 Onwards and

Upwards 4 In the Company of

Antonio Carluccio 5 Nervous Energy: Will

the Lights Stay On?6 Cuckoo Tricks 7 The Politics of

Islamic Law 8 ‘This sacred Temple,

which we cannotsufficiently admire.’

9 PemWomen@30…A Celebratory Year

10A Sunday AfternoonDrive to Mongolia

11Around the World in380 Days

12 Creative Writing atPembroke

13Gossip15 Poet’s Corner

Published byPembroke CollegeCambridge CB2 1RFTelephone 01223 338100Email: martlet@pem.cam.ac.uk

EditorAlex Houen

Gossip EditorColin Wilcockson

IllustrationsMartin Rowson

© Pembroke College 2015

Photography and illustrationscopyright of the owners

Design cambridgesesignstudio.org

Print Langham Press Ltd

Farewell The Master, Sir Richard Dearlove

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Sometimes, it feels like development work is a Sisypheanstruggle: we work hard to achieve something, only tofind there is something else that still needs to be

attained, a new goal to be reached – the mountain higher,the boulder heavier than we thought.

In 2012, thanks to the marvellous support of Pembrokemembers and friends, we exceeded what we’d planned to be the great funding achievement of Sir Richard Dearlove’s tenure as Master. Our endowment campaign,Excellence in Perpetuity, raised £29 million against a targetof £25 million, and the College’s endowment has grownaccordingly. That growth, coupled with the continuinggenerosity of people like you, means that we feel confidentabout the future. We have a solid endowment on which tobuild, but also the resources, we trust, to push that boulderhigher up the mountain.

So what can we see at the summit? Something that hasbeen there, shimmering in the distance, for some time now,in fact.

Anyone who has read the Master’s pieces for theGazette and Martlet, or attended one of the

plethora of events that the College organises,will know about our hopes for Mill Lane. A

significant development at the end of 2014saw four interested colleges (Pembroke,St Catharine’s, Queens’ and Darwin)reach an agreement with the Universityto purchase and developthe site. Such anopportunityfor a major

expansion of the architectural bounds of the College has notcome about for centuries, and we anticipate it will becenturies before another chance arises. This is a uniquemoment in Pembroke’s history to transform and enlarge theCollege’s site to meet current and future demands andobjectives. It is nothing less than a second foundation for theCollege. Put simply, we cannot miss this chance!

It will be expensive (some estimates put the cost at circa£50 million), but it is worth noting that it is the value, notthe cost, on which we must focus. The site will provideaccommodation, in all likelihood predominantly forpostgraduate students, recognising the growth in theirnumber and the increasingly important role they play in theCollege’s community and in the wider University academicreputation. The site will also give Pembroke the chance tocreate a research centre that reflects the interdisciplinarynature of the College, while ensuring that the inexorablemove of Faculties and Departments north-westwards in thecity does not leave a college like Pembroke as a mere hall ofresidence. There is the potential greatly to improve theteaching environment of the College by the addition ofsupervision and seminar rooms and an auditorium, while theacquisition of listed buildings directly opposite the currentPorter’s Lodge means that the site will truly be an extensionof our ambit and not an annexe.

Before he retires as Master, Sir Richard will be doingeverything he can to realise our ambition: this will includespeaking to benefactors who can make this distant financialtarget seem achievable while ensuring that the fundamental

principles of a solid working relationship with the othercolleges and with the University are established. It is inCambridge’s best interest for the Mill Lane site to bedeveloped the way the four colleges are envisaging, andit is the colleges’ interest for the University to be fullybehind and involved in our plans. There is a jointdevelopment board leading on the plans, symbolic ofthe good faith which has governed the openingnegotiations to the present day. I hope that PembrokeMembers and friends will share in the excitement andconfidence here in what this site can do for the Collegefor the long term future.

In pushing that boulder up the hill, I am greatlylooking forward to working with Chris Smith as hetakes over the reins from Richard Dearlove, but itwould be remiss of me not to take this opportunity tothank Richard personally for what he has done for meand my team over the course of his Mastership.

From before he arrived, Richard realised theimportance of development and fundraising to thelife of the College and he has led from the front,while being unflinchingly supportive of our effortsas a critical friend and as an executive officer.Pembroke Members and other friends have warmedto him, and he to them, and this has translated intoa magnificent period in the College’s history wheresuccess on all fronts has been a collective effort, ablyguided by Richard’s influence. But it hasn’t just beensuccessful, it has been genuinely interesting to workwith him, to meet the people he has brought to theCollege and to see how the whole community has

benefited over these last eleven years.My team and I wish Richard and Rosalind very

well in their retirement and look forward to theircontinued close interest in the health of the College.

Onwards and Upwards Matthew Mellor, Director of Development

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This year’s ‘Serata Italiana’ (Italian Evening), one ofthe College events made possible by the generosityof Mr Keith Sykes (1965), took place on 23

February. Pembroke was delighted to have the celebratedItalian chef and restaurateur Antonio Carluccio as the guestof honour. Author of twenty-two books, and presenter ofnumerous hugely popular television programmes, MrCarluccio is a living encyclopaedia of food, a free spirit, fullof energy and new ideas. His visit was enriched by thepresence of the Italian Ambassador to London, MrPasquale Terracciano who joined the party for what turnedout to be a truly special event.

Following the drinks reception in the Thomas GrayRoom, Mr Carluccio, the Ambassador, the Master and MrSykes chatted their way to the Old Library in conversationwith students, Fellows and the other guests. Carluccio, OBEand Commendatore (the Italian equivalent of a Britishknighthood), aged 77, was in great form; charming andcurious about the collegiate life and Pembroke’s Italian vibe.Before the reception took place, he and his partner SabineStevenson had been taken by Mr Savio Cafagna, the CollegeButler, for a private tour of Pembroke’s kitchen where therestaurateur met the staff and the head chef for the night,Mr Stuart Little. Carluccio left everyone with a lovelyimpression and no Hell’s Kitchen shouting.

The menu included Italian parmigiana, British roastbeef, and a multinational slice of apple cake with chocolateice-cream. The wine list was decidedly more topical:Prosecco, Bianco Arneis, Chianti Riserva and Vin Santo.The final toasts offered the opportunity to thank the Masterfor his long-standing support of the Italian activities atPembroke, Mr Keith Sykes for his exceedingly generouscontribution to the convivial life of the College, and MrCarluccio for having helped so many to re-discover theimportance of a ‘common table’ for eating together.

There were two memorable anecdotes that Carlucciooffered up to capture the spirit of Italy, a country that lovesfood, and where food is prepared with love. ‘As you allknow’, he started, ‘a few weeks ago, one of the greatestItalian statesmen, the President Giorgio Napolitanoresigned from office.’ Mr Napolitano, a man of moderation,had indeed helped to steer Italian politics since 2011,spearheading the creation of three consecutive reform-minded governments : Mario Monti’s, Enrico Letta’s, andthe current one led by Matteo Renzi. In 2013, aged 87,Napolitano reluctantly agreed to stand again for election,to safeguard the country and the continuity of Italianinstitutions. ‘So, a group of journalists is following himdown this narrow Roman street’, Carluccio continued,‘down from the Quirinale hill to his home, after ten longyears of very difficult decisions. And there are some peoplewaiting for him outside the front door, cheering him up andtrying to shake his hand. A woman gets a bit closer andasks: ‘President, what are you gonna have for lunch today?’Mr Carluccio smiled: ‘This was her concern, but also herway of showing affection, understanding. Notwithstandingthat, I imagine the former President was wonderingabout the same thing.’

As Cantuccini biscuits and VinSanto started to circulate alongthe tables, Carluccio addedhis second anecdote: ‘For our most recent tv

series for the BBC, we were shooting in a little sea town inPuglia, Southern Italy. There was a small stall against astone wall, selling fresh fish, and a group of people“queueing”… as Italians do. Waiting for his turn was a littlefellow, wet and shivering. He had just been swimming inthe sea. I looked at him as he pulled out his skinny bluisharm, with goose bumps; he gave the fisherman some changeand then, very seriously, as children can be, he started eatingthe sea urchin that the vendor had handed him in exchange.Now, there really are not many other places in the worldwhere boys at that age would crave a sea urchin rather thana lollypop.’

The end of the evening rapidly approached. Seatingbetween the Italian Ambassador and the Master, Carluccioadmired the presence of so many intelligent and attractivefemale students : ‘I hope the time when you will be incharge will soon arrive.’ Carluccio, who was once invitedby Prince Charles to explore for mushrooms at Balmoral,and who managed for many years one of the most popularrestaurants in London (The Neal Street), had much toexchange with our Master. But, at that point, the warmnoise of the tinkling glasses was too loud for me to hear.What I did overhear, however, is that Carluccio would liketo come back to Pembroke soon – possibly this Autumn tocook for the College his famous mushroom risotto at thenext Italian Serata.

In the Company of Antonio CarluccioAmbrogio Camozzi-Pistoja

Ambrogio Camozzi-Pistoja is the current Keith SykesResearch Fellow in ItalianStudies at Pembroke. Hisresearch focuses on medievaltheories of satire, and he iswriting a book entitled Dantethe Satirist. He completed hisdegree in Medieval Philology inMilan, and an MPhil inEuropean Literature andculture at Cambridge. His PhDwas funded by the GatesCambridge.

From left to right: Mr Keith Sykes, Commendatore Antonio Carluccio, HE Ambassador Pasquale Terraciano,Signora Karen Terracciano, Sir Richard Dearlove, Dr Ambrogio Camozzi-Pistoja.

Credit: Rachel Smith, College Reporter

We live in a society where we take electricity forgranted – we rarely question whether electricitywill continue to flow from the ever-increasing

number of sockets we use to power a vast range of devices.Prior to coming to Cambridge in 2009, I spent seventeenyears in the US and experienced the 2003 Northeastern USBlackout. Yes, the lights went out, but it was much more:the fridge was no longer cold, there was no air conditioning,no kettle, no microwave... Driving up Route 87 with myhusband, on our way to a walking break in the mountainsin upstate New York, we realised that something waswrong when we stopped at a very dark ‘rest-stop’ for petrol.Panic set in as I realised that the mobile phone system wasdown, and that an electricity shutdown would knock outthe electrical ‘sump pump’ that prevents my lab fromflooding (the lab is below the water table and the pumpremoves the water that constantly leaks in). It wasn’t evenpossible to call the lab to check! So, yes, I do worry aboutpowering lights (and the sump pump).

The 9th William Pitt Seminar, which took place lastOctober, was held at a particularly pertinent time. Two ofBritain’s power plants had been crippled by fire earlier inthe year, and a fire ripped through Didcot power stationonly two days after the seminar. Coal-fired power plantswere being shut down to help meet CO2 reduction targetsand it was not clear – to some at least – that the UK had a

sufficiently robust supply of electricity to keep it goingthrough the winter. We may have ‘dodged the bullet’ in2014, but does that mean the UK’s electricity supply issecure enough moving forward?

The Pitt Seminar was chaired by Lord Oxburgh ofLiverpool (former Queens’ College President, Head ofDepartment of Earth Sciences at Cambridge, and ChiefScientific Advisor to the MOD). Prof. Roderick Smith(Imperial College, and former Chief Scientific Advisor tothe Department of Transport) reminded us that the digital

age requires as much energy today as was needed to powerthe whole world in 1985. We forget that ‘cloud computing’is, in reality, many banks of servers, all over the world, thatconsume as much electricity as small towns. CandidaWhitmill (Managing Director of Penultimate Power)discussed ‘misguided’ European energy policy, arguing thecase for small nuclear reactors. My role was to describehow science could save the day, and to highlight theopportunities for younger scientists (and economists, socialscientists, etc.) to engage with the problems our societyfaces in this area. The final presenter was Alistair Buchanan(former CEO of British Energy Regulator Ofgem andcurrent Chairman of the KPMG Power and UtilitiesPractice), who, using only a pen and a large sheet of paper,outlined the UK’s energy interconnections with Belgium andIreland and discussed the impact of the closure of UK powerplants over the last two years. It was a thought-provokingand sobering evening.

The electricity grid is a complex structure constrainedby regulations, multiple companies, and constantlychanging demands and supply. The need to increaserenewables (wind, solar) has introduced an inherentinstability to the grid, and the changeable British weathernow affects more than the summer holiday. (Lower averagewind speeds resulted in 10% less energy from renewablesin 2014 than in 2013, despite additional capacity). I workon battery and supercapacitor technologies. Thesetechnologies underpin the portable electronics revolutionand help power the digital age – and so have indirectlycontributed to the energy ‘problem’. But they have alsoenriched our lives in many ways and can, in fact, be usedto help stabilize the grid by providing back-up power. Theirinherently small sizes – in contrast to, for example, ahydroelectric power station – mean that they are used forsmall jobs: dealing with short periods of high demand (the6 o’ clock kettle spike) and dramatic changes in wind orsolar power. Their role could be increased if we could cutcosts and ensure that they last longer (20-40 years for thegrid, vs. 2-3 years for laptop batteries).

We need to design chemistries and processes that can bescaled for the grid, building batteries that are no longer cm-sized but larger than small office blocks. We need to shutoff all the almost inevitable side-reactions that occurbetween the highly oxidized and reduced species present inthe battery, and which result in safety concerns along withthe slow degradation of battery performance. Mylaboratory focuses on designing new methods to ‘watch’batteries and supercapacitors while they are charged anddischarged. We try to determine why some of the bestbattery materials are effective, and then use this informationto improve the functioning of other devices. It is animportant field, and one where we need continuedinvestment (no self-interest here of course!).

Any advances made in the laboratory generally takemore than seven years to move into the market place. If weare to meet the 2020 EU and UK targets for CO2 emissions,not to mention the 2050 ones, we need both research anddevelopment, and we must continue to train the nextgeneration of students in these new areas. I have very muchenjoyed my return to the UK and the opportunity to engagewith the Cambridge academic community and, I hope,make small contributions to this exploding area of researchand technology and its massive social implications.

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Nervous Energy: Will the Lights Stay On?Clare Grey on the 2014 William Pitt Seminar

Clare P. Grey, FRS is theGeoffrey Moorhouse-GibsonProfessor of Chemistry atCambridge University and aFellow of Pembroke College.She received a BA and DPhil(1991) from Oxford University;she was a Professor at StonyBrook University from 1994,returning to the UK in 2009.She uses solid state NMRspectroscopy and diffractionbased methods to understandhow materials for energystorage and conversionfunction.

The 2014 Pitt Seminar panel. From left to right: Mr Alistair Buchan, Prof. Clare Grey, Lord Oxburgh (Chair), Ms Candida Whitmill, Prof. Roderick Smith.

Credit: Nigel Luckhurst

When I was a Pembroke undergraduate, back in theearly 1970s, I often escaped the libraries andlaboratories of Cambridge by cycling out to the

fens to go bird watching. The advice of one of mysupervisors rang in my ears: ‘The days when you could goout with binoculars and notebook and discover somethingnew are long gone.’ I felt sure he was wrong.

One bird intrigued me – the cuckoo, our harbinger ofspring and Nature’s most notorious cheat. At each nest sheparasitizes, the female cuckoo removes a host egg andreplaces it with one of her own. Soon after it hatches, thecuckoo chick ejects the remaining host eggs and any hostyoung out of the nest. Every summer, thousands of smallbirds will have their eggs and chicks tossed aside by youngcuckoos. The host parents are then doomed to raise acuckoo chick rather than a brood of their own. How, Iwondered, do cuckoos get away with it?

In theory there should be an evolutionary arms race inwhich hosts evolve better defences and cuckoos, in turn,evolve better trickery. But the sight of a little warblerfeeding an enormous cuckoo chick makes you wonderwhether hosts have any defences at all. My colleagues andI have been studying this question by field experiments.Every summer still brings fresh surprises.

Over a hundred years ago, egg collectors already knewthat there are several races of cuckoo. Each race specialiseson one particular host species and it lays a distinctive eggtype that tends to match its host’s eggs. We tested if thecuckoo’s egg mimicry was important for deceiving hosts byplaying the part of the cuckoo ourselves and putting modeleggs into host nests. Our activities were once reported tothe local police and we had to explain to a bemused officerthat we weren’t collecting eggs; our licence was for puttingextra eggs into birds’ nests. Our experiments showed thathosts were much more likely to eject an egg from the nestif it differed from their own eggs in colour and markings.And the more discriminating the host species, the better wasthe egg mimicry by its cuckoo race.

Hosts not only evolve egg rejection as a defence, theiregg patterns evolve too, with complex markings acting assignatures to enable hosts to better recognise their owneggs. The spots and squiggles on the shell are in effect theway the hosts signify ‘this is my egg’. The cuckoo then hasto evolve a forgery: ‘and so is this one’. In support of this

idea, cuckoo hosts have more complex markings on theireggs compared to other species with no evolutionary historyof cuckoo parasitism. Furthermore, these have thecharacteristics you’d expect of reliable signatures:individual females have their own distinctive markings andthese are consistent across all the eggs they lay. The resultis an evolutionary chase, with hosts evolving new signaturesto escape cuckoos, and cuckoos, in turn, evolving newforgeries.

Female cuckoos are masters of egg disguise, but they arealso very secretive and they lay with astonishing speed; thevisit to parasitize a host nest is often just 10 seconds! Totest if secrecy and speed was also essential, we placed astuffed mount of a female cuckoo on a host nest, tosimulate a slow cuckoo. The hosts were quick to attack itand their alarm calls attracted neighbours too. Once alertedby the sight of a cuckoo, both the territory owners and theirneighbours were much more likely to reject an experimentalegg, even one that was a good match of their own. So todeceive her hosts the cuckoo needs to combine her eggmimicry with secret behaviour.

Perhaps the most extraordinary cuckoo trick is the waythe cuckoo nestling manipulates the hosts to bring sufficientfood. It has an amazingly rapid begging call that soundslike a whole brood of hungry host young. We showed thatthis is the trick that spurs the hosts to bring more food byexperiments, in which we broadcast begging calls throughlittle loud speakers next to the nest. So the hosts are fooledby visual trickery with cuckoo eggs and by vocal trickerywith cuckoo chicks.

Our studies reveal that Nature’s arms race leads notonly to the evolution of cruelty, in the cuckoo chick’sejection behaviour, but also beauty, in the form of intricateegg markings. ‘Is Pembroke just for cuckoos?’ asked myyoungest daughter, when she was at Primary School. Now,there’s an idea … there’s still plenty more to discover in thisfascinating corner of Darwin’s entangled bank.

Cuckoo TricksNick Davies (1970) writes of his recent research

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Nick Davies is Professor ofBehavioural Ecology in theDepartment of Zoology andhas been a Fellow of Pembrokesince 1979. His book for ageneral readership, Cuckoo –Cheating by Nature, has justbeen published byBloomsbury, with fielddrawings by James McCallum.

Reed warbler, the main host species in the fens, feeding a cuckoonestling.

Drawing by James M

cCallum

Cuckoo egg (bottom right) in a reed warbler nest.

Credit: Seb Chandler

Ibegan to study Islam as an academic subject at Harvardin the days when it was still a niche subject. A fewmonths before the 9/11 attacks, I began doctoral work

on Islamic law, and since then the study of Islam andMuslim societies has risen in prominence, in politics as wellas in the academy. More recently, the ‘Arab Spring’ and therise of the ‘Islamic State’ have moved questions of Islamiclaw and the shari’ah even further towards centre stage.Despite this, confusion endures about what these termsmean, how Muslims deploy them in politics and statecraft,and why it might matter to get them right – or at leastunderstand why confusion about Islamic law and shari’ahmay be part of our politics for some time to come.

The Arabic word ‘shari’ah’ shares a root meaning withthe word contemporary Arabic speakers use for ‘street’ –both refer to pathways. Shari’ah is a divinely prescribedpath of right conduct through life, only a small part ofwhich fits into the way most states today define law.Scholars of Islamic legal history often point out that a majordefining feature of shari’ah jurisprudence has, until veryrecently, been its capacity for ambiguity and diversity – itsability to accommodate conflicting opinions on matters oflaw, its remarkable flexibility and responsiveness to socialand political questions.

The major transformative event for the way the shari’ahnow functions was the rise of the interventionist,bureaucratic state – a state which wrested control overshari’ah interpretation, adjudication and education frommultiple local institutions and began, in the eighteenthcentury, to attempt to exert a monopoly over Islamic law.My research locates these transformative moments inBritish colonial India, Malaya and Egypt, and seeks tounderstand how Muslims themselves became invested in aradical redefinition of shari’ah as ‘Islamic law’ – from abroad pathway through life, to a narrow state-controlledset of codes pertaining to matters of ritual and family.

The majority of Muslims today only encounter Islamiclaw in the courts in matters of marriage and divorce,because most states have generally confined it to family law.Yet this narrow domain of Islamic law continues to carrythe symbolic and sacred weight of shari’ah. The tensionbetween these understandings of shari’ah and Islamic lawexist for most Muslims and Muslim states, and have formuch of Islamic history, and they are powerfully productiveof a range of meanings, discourses and strategies for theconduct of Muslim life. The confusion is neither merely asymptom of Western power politics, nor an artefact of thecomplexity or diversity of Islam – it has beeninstitutionalised in most Muslim states, over the past twocenturies. Throughout this history, a dynamic of increasingcentralisation and bureaucratisation of the law broughtIslam under state control at the same time that it limitedIslamic law to the areas of personal status: marriage,divorce, ritual practice, religious endowments.

In India in the 1760s and 1770s, British colonialofficials working for the East India Company set intomotion a process by which Indian subjects wouldincreasingly be governed by codified versions of what theBritish understood to be the religious laws of Hindus andMuslims – laws covering marriage, divorce, and ritualobservance. In Malaya in the 1870s, British treaties withthe Malay sultans preserved Malay religion and custom,understood as Islam, as a domain of sovereignty for the

sultans, offering some elites in Malaya incentives to supportcircumscribed jurisdiction for Islam in exchange forexclusive control over that jurisdiction. In Egypt in the1880s, Egyptian Muslim elites who resisted thecircumscription of Islam to the area of ‘personal status law’found themselves excluded from roles in government; it was the Muslim elites who remained in power in Egypt who brought the shari’ah and personal law together in a formula still in use throughout the legal systems of the Arabic-speaking world today – al-ahkam al-shar’iyyahfi al-ahwal al-shakhsiyya – the shari’ah laws of personalstatus.

Debates about the proper place of the shari’ah todaycarry the echoes of colonial and national histories in whichthe power of the state grew out of its takeover anddecimation of varied local institutions for Islamicscholarship, education and conflict resolution. Groups thatadvocate for a ‘return’ to Islamic law – by which the statewould enforce a broad codified shar’iah – invoke anostalgia for a past that has never existed. The view ofIslamic law as the repository of tradition and culture inMuslim states is ahistorical, since tradition and culturethemselves have been re-defined repeatedly over the pasttwo centuries; it is fundamentally problematic, since itallows the equation of family law and Islamic law to gounquestioned; it is also politically loaded, since the castingof Islamic law as ‘traditional’ has long been part of a logic by which Muslim societies have been seen asbackward in comparison to the West, and therefore in needof intervention.

Seeking out the politics in Islamic law allowscontradiction and ambiguity to play a critical role in ouranalysis of Muslim institutions, states and individuals.Islamic scholars in eighteenth-century India, law reformersin nineteenth-century Egypt, and Muslim women activistswhom I met in Malaysia recently, all operated in the spacesbetween shari’ah and Islamic law. Out of contradiction andambiguity, they made new opportunities for making claims,building identities, pressing advantage. The conditions ofdoubt, of tension and of deep historical investment thatcharacterise much Muslim debate and struggle todayrepresent not a series of failures to be overcome, butlegacies in need of continued evaluation.

The Politics of Islamic LawNew Fellow Iza Hussin writes about her research

Iza Hussin is Mohamed NoahFellow at Pembroke Collegeand University Lecturer inPolitics and InternationalStudies. Before coming up toCambridge, she was AssistantProfessor in Political Science atthe University of Chicago. Hermonograph The Politics ofIslamic Law: Local Elites, ColonialAuthority and the Making of theMuslim State (University ofChicago Press) is forthcomingin 2015. Her current researchtraces law’s trajectories acrossthe Indian Ocean.

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When Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, consecratedPembroke College Chapel on St Matthews’ Day,21 September 1665, to the worship of Almighty

God, it was the culmination of his gift to the College (a giftmade to fulfil a vow he had undertaken during his eighteenyears’ imprisonment in the Tower of London), and it hadcost £3,658. 1s. 5d to build.1 The Book of Common Prayer,however, contained no rite of consecration: the sixteenth-century Church of England had other concerns. Matthewhimself, recently translated to the See of Ely, had in 1639 been perturbed to find that a chapel in Childerley,Cambridgeshire, had been consecrated by an earlier Bishopof Ely, Martin Heton, simply by saying a service and ‘havinga sermon’.2

That would not do for Matthew, who together with hisbrother Christopher (Senior) – father of the famousarchitect – had in 1620 attended Bishop LancelotAndrewes3 as chaplains at the consecration of the JesusChapel and Cemetery at St Mary extra Southampton,known as the Peartree Chapel. Andrewes’ rite became, andremains, normative for consecrations;4 comparison withthe order used at the consecration of Peterhouse Chapel byBishop Francis White (Heton’s successor in 1632 whenWren was Master there) shows remarkable similarities,albeit with a greater use of Latin.5 Few documents survivefrom the actual consecration of Pembroke Chapel, but thefour items which remain fit neatly with the Peartree andPeterhouse liturgies, and make it extremely probable thatthe same orders were used.

The event would have taken all day, beginning probablyat eight in the morning, when Matthew would have stoodbefore the Chapel door while the Fellows requested him toconsecrate the chapel, and after a flowery Latin preamble(from which I’ve gleaned the title of this article), the Master,Robert Mapletoft, handed him the key. Once inside, a ritestrongly derived from the consecration of Solomon’s Templebegan, with Psalm 24 (‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates’) andthe beginning of Psalm 122 (‘I was glad when they said untome, Let us go into the house of the Lord’) recited solemnlyin Latin, with beautiful prayers by Andrewes that had beenused originally at in English at Peartree, and then in Latinat the Peterhouse consecration. Wren worked his wayaround the Chapel, laying his hand, with prayer, on thevarious furnishings, the places of daily prayer andpreaching, and of the Eucharist. Kneeling before the HolyTable he asked that the Chapel be separated from allsecular and profane uses.

Then came Morning Prayer and the celebration of theLord’s Supper (both in English) with sermon. Followingmore prayers, Matthew, seated in his chair and attended byhis second son, Archdeacon Thomas Wren, and the Master,read out the elaborately calligraphic legal Act which stillsurvives. After the Blessing, proceedings were adjourned fordinner; the Chapel account book records the cost of this as£10. 7s. 6d – five times what it had cost the previous year.The Vice-Chancellor, Several Masters of Colleges, theHeads of the University as well as the Dean and Canons ofEly attended. The Masters of Pembroke, Peterhouse, andJesus Colleges were to be appointed Trustees of the Manorof Hardwick (the Chapel endowment), and each given a keyto the still-surviving Hardwick Chest.

That afternoon, the burial areas were consecrated (againafter the formal request to the Bishop from the Fellows) andthe legal instrument of consecration was read. The specificareas were: the antechapel, for the burial of Fellows; theCell under what was then the east end of the Chapel, forMatthew’s own burial and that of select persons (describedat the time as a ‘dormitory’ for his Lordship); and the areaunder the cloister for scholars who died while in residence. In consecrating the cloister for the burial of students,Matthew Wren would probably not have thought beyondattacks of plague or consumption. We know that theCloister was occasionally used for burials during the nexttwo centuries. In 1924, however, it was chosen as theobvious place to record the names of the members of theCollege, many of them undergraduates, who fell in the FirstWorld War. Sacred space indeed.

‘This sacred Temple, which wecannot sufficiently admire.’Jayne Ringrose writes of the consecration of Pembroke’s Chapel 350 years ago

Jayne Ringrose is honoraryarchivist of the College and aBye-Fellow. She retired asdeputy Keeper of Manuscriptsat the University Library in2012.

1 So the Chapel account book College MS. 5.ii.365. The figure oftengiven, £5,000, is not supported.2 William Laud, Works (Oxford 1847-60) 5.ii, 361. I thank PeterMeadows for this reference.3 Lancelot Andrewes, Master of Pembroke 1589-1605; successivelyBishop of Chichester, Ely and Winchester.4 The text, which repays detailed study, is available athttp://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp//Andrewes_Consecration_Church.htm5 Peterhouse Archives, Vetus Registrum pp 480-90. I thank Dr RogerLovatt, Fellow Archivist of Peterhouse for his ready assistance inallowing me to photograph part of the Register.

The Act of Consecration for Pembroke’s Chapel.

The Hardwick Chest.

Building Pembroke Chapel:Wren, Pearce and Scott by A.V.Grimstone (1952) can bepurchased from the FinanceOffice, Pembroke College,Cambridge, CB2 1RF. Pleasesend your name, address andpayment. The cost is £15 plus£2 p&p in the UK; £5 p&p forthe rest of Europe; elsewhere,p&p £5 (surface mail) or £10(airmail). Payment may bemade by cheque in £s sterlingpayable to ‘Pembroke College’;or by bank transfer to‘Pembroke College’, BarclaysBank, Sort Code 20-17-19,Account Number 30712620(please include a reference to‘Chapel Book’). For payment bycredit/debit card contact theCollege by ’phone on 01223338126.

Photos credit: Jayne Ringrose

9

PemWomen@30… A Celebratory YearLoraine Gelsthorpe

Iarrived in Pembroke in 1994, so this thirtiethanniversary year of women being matriculated asstudents is the twentieth anniversary for me, and a year

in which I find myself as the most senior female Fellow.There were very few women Fellows at the point of myarrival, but there was certainly much celebration of womenas members of the College. One of the first College eventsI attended was devoted to the Lady Foundress, with allwomen in the College (students, staff, and fellows) beinginvited to drink a toast to her. It was clearly much morethan that, though, for it was largely an occasion to celebratebeing women in the College.

In the academic year of 2014-15 there has been muchcause to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary within the wholeCollege, which is why a dedicated team of peoplerepresenting Fellows, students and staff have created aprogramme of events under the heading of ‘PemWomen@30’.This programme was set up to reflect on the issues anddebates which led up to the decision to admit women asstudents, but also to examine what has happened during thepast thirty years, and to consider where Pembroke mightlike to be with regard to diversity after another thirty years.

We started the year with a Michaelmas term Hallinstallation of ‘Skirts and Ties’ across the gallery,representing the gender balance of Pembroke studentsduring the year 1984-1985 (forty ties and four skirts), andsignature dishes from Pembroke’s five women chefs for aspecial BA Dinner in aid of Camfed, a Cambridge-basedcharity which helps girls from sub-Saharan Africa receivean education. (Camfed is one of the two charities beingsupported during the year by members of the College, theother being Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre.)

Another event, titled ‘How many long mirrors?’,demonstrated perfectly how much the College has changedover the past thirty years. This talk and discussion waschaired by Lady Adrian and involved reflections fromemeritus fellows Ian Fleming (1956) and John Waldram(1956) describing something of the internecine argumentsin College for and against admitting women, and BrianWatchorn, newly-appointed Dean and Chaplain at the time,reflecting on the early days of women students in College.Pembroke rather dragged its feet over the issue (comparedto other colleges which had already gone mixed) to considerwhat were deemed to be practical obstacles to admittingwomen – such as changes needed to the bathrooms, and thequestion of how many long mirrors would be needed, aswell as other matters, both large and small.

Pembroke’s contribution to Cambridge’s annual Festivalof Ideas this year was PemWomen@30 related, as the Collegehosted a panel discussion on the question ‘Is menstruationhealthy?’, which challenged cultural reluctance to talk aboutthe issue as well as misconceptions that menstruation issomehow ‘unhealthy’.

Lent term activities included another week of the Hallinstallation, but with an equal number of skirts and ties onthe gallery line to representing the more-or-less equalproportion of men and women students within the Collegenow. Having reflected backwards during the Michaelmasterm, another talk and discussion revolved around ‘wherewe stand now’. This event, convened by Pembroke FellowDr Lauren Kassell, focused on the College’s educationalmission, with perspectives from various Fellows,undergraduates, graduates, and staff.

The 1347 Committee chose to mark the thirtiethanniversary by holding a ‘Life Beyond Pembroke’ eventspecifically aimed at celebrating College alumnae who havegone on to achieve distinction in their chosen careers. Inanother celebratory event during Lent, the GraduateParlour chose to tackle the question of why it is that womenare often less heard than men in the workplace. Seven guestpanelists – with very different and exciting careers spanningscience, business, law, human resources, and academia –discussed their perspectives on the topic, and offered tipsfor effective communication in the work place. A charityauction, organized by the Graduate Parlour’s charityrepresentative, raised over £2,000 for Camfed, with prizesincluding a holiday house in France for a week, bottles offine wine, a rubix-cube lesson, a home-baked celebratorycake, and bicycle maintenance!

The Easter term is bringing another creative installationin Hall, this time looking to the future, when the Hall’sportraits will no doubt include some women of note inaddition to the Foundress! There will be another panel talkfocusing on future diversity in the College and beyond, anda special anniversary dinner in June.

Through all of the events I’ve mentioned, PemWomen@30is aimed at fostering reflection and celebration as well asforward thinking and action. For a full account of the activitiessee: www.pem.cam.ac.uk/pemwomenat30/. That websiteincludes details of the students, staff and Fellows who havebeen involved in organizing the events – it’s truly been ateam effort, though special thanks must go to Monica Wirz(2009) for her inspiration and organisational skills. Doplease send to the ‘Stories and Memories’ section of thewebsite your own reflections on what it was like in Collegein the early days of women being admitted as students.

Loraine Gelsthorpe became aFellow in 1994, and has beenTutor for Graduate Affairs since2003. She is Professor ofCriminology and CriminalJustice and Deputy Director ofthe Institute of Criminology, aswell as being Director of theCambridge ESRC DoctoralTraining Centre across thesocial sciences, and nationalPresident of the British Societyof Criminology.

Lent term ‘Skirts and Ties’ installation in Hall.

Credit: Rachel Smith, College Recorder

The ‘How many long mirrors?’ panel in the Old Library.

Credit: Rachel Smith, College Recorder

10

Last summer, a friend and I decided we wanted to makeuse of what could be our last long summer togetherand do something we’d never have the chance to do

again. After several nights debating the various options, wesettled on The Mongol Rally. The team would consist ofmyself, Jamie Robson (2011), Rory Scott (2011) and MattWalton (Trinity Hall). The Mongol Rally is a charity rally inwhich teams of up to four people drive from London toUlaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. The car’s engine must beno larger than 1.2L and cost no more than £800. It is not arace; it is an adventure.

Our preparations started badly when the first car webought broke down on the way home from the seller. Oursecond purchase proved better: a ten-year-old DaihatsuTerios from a Newcastle car auction. We bolted a roof boxon top, threw on a set of van tyres and bought copiousamounts of duct tape. We were ready to set off!

We sped through Europe in six days, and after a longovernight drive into Turkey we spent our first rest day inIstanbul. Unfortunately, this is where Rory left us to go andstudy in America. After a trip to a traditional Turkish bath,we said our goodbyes and the three of us remaining team-members started a forty-hour straight drive to the Iranianborder.

Iran is an incredibly beautiful country but the drivers …they are insane. There is no lane discipline and no indicationof when a car is going to swerve in front of you, which allmakes for interesting traffic jams. In the five days we were inthe country we spent over 25 hours stuck in traffic,constantly having to stay alert to avoid crashing into thelocals – a rather exhausting experience. Traffic aside, Iranwas, in my opinion, the best country we visited and thegenerosity of the locals was humbling, particularly incomparison to common media portrayals of Iran. At onepoint we found ourselves out of petrol without any localcurrency, and instead of being turned away by petrol stationswe were given free fuel, biscuits and orange juice – an act Iwould be surprised to witness in England.

After Iran we ventured into Turkmenistan, the only PoliceState on our trip, and stopped off at ‘The Door to Hell’, agas crater that has been burning since 1971. This spectacularburning landmark is located pretty much in the middle of adesert, which proved a slight issue for our little old Terios.The atrocious quality of road all around slowed us so muchwe exited the country only hours before our visas expired,nearly landing us a couple of nights in jail.

We never intended to spend much time in Uzbekistan, buta trip north to see the Aral Sea left us short on petrol. To our

surprise we found that petrol was a scarce resource,something you would never have expected of a countryneighbouring Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. This left usgoing around the streets knocking on locals’ doors in searchof petrol. Uzbekistan is a large country, requiring severaltanks to cross, so this became a regular occurrence.

A few days later we arrived in Kyrgyzstan, the firstcountry since Iran to have roads that wouldn’t shatter yourspine or shear your rear axle if you went too fast. Kyrgyzstanalso held the trip record for the number of times we werepulled over by the police: we averaged six stops a day, withdemands for bribes ranging from $10-$200. Here we met upwith other ralliers and decided to convoy the last part of thetrip together. Next stop Kazakhstan.

We were all running a little behind schedule at this pointso pushed on towards the Russian border as quickly aspossible. Naturally, this was when major mechanical issuesarose. Halfway through Kazakhstan, we cracked both rearcoil springs in two places. Spare parts are not an option inKazakhstan, so with the help a local mechanic we cut an oldpair of springs from an ex-army Soviet truck and jammedthem in, jacking the rear of our now beloved car up an extrasix inches and making the ride very solid. Ready to head offin the morning, we set up camp in a field at the side of theroad with the ralliers who had been kind enough to wait; itturned out to be the early stages of a naturally occurringmarijuana field.

Once in Russia, we returned to tarmacked roads – aluxury I will never again take for granted! – and made goodtime in reaching the Mongolian border. The finish lineseemed so close, but the next seven days were some of thetoughest of the trip. Mongolians travel on horseback a lot ofthe time, so roads are not a necessity; what they call roadswe would probably call fields in England. CrossingMongolia, including large parts of the Gobi Desert, was oneof the best experiences I’ve ever had. It felt like I was on aweek-long 4x4 driving experience. Inevitably this led to cartroubles, which made it that much more rewarding to hit thecountry’s only piece of tarmac only fifty miles fromUlaanbaatar.

So there we have it: 42 days and 10,000 miles after settingoff from London, with over £3,000 raised for charity, wemade it to the finish line. All that was left was to say goodbyeto the incredible car that had carried us all that way.

A Sunday Afternoon Drive to Mongolia Rob Sanders (2011)

Rob Sanders is a fourth-yearNatural Scientist specialising inchemistry.

From left to right: Matt, Rob, and Jamie in front of ‘The Door to Hell’ craterin Turkmenistan.

At the finish line in Ulaanbaatar.

11

On the 1st September 2013 I set off from Cambridgeon a round-the-world cycle trip. Three hundred andeighty days later I returned to Pembroke having

cycled over 30,000km and raised more than £17,000 forthe British Red Cross’s International Disaster Fund. I missedthe College’s friendly community a lot whilst I was awayand I’m now happily settled back in.

My aim was to pack light and cycle a lot! I had a tentand five panniers carrying a change of clothes, a waterproofcoat, some tools, a camping stove and lots of food andwater. My bike and load weighed about 45 kg, which isfairly low for a touring cyclist, but when I had a day ofuphill riding my legs really felt it.

The bike held up really well. I cleaned it about once aweek and I’m sure that helped to prolong its life; I evencycle the bike around Cambridge at the moment. I had afew punctures here and there, new chain and gears inAustralia and several new brake pads, but nothing serious– which is amazing for the distance the bike went.

To navigate I used maps. I preferred using maps to GPSas a map can never run out of battery. For the whole year Ihad a vague route in mind, but I would only reallythoroughly plan at most a week’s ride at a time. I did takesome flights [insert your own pedalo joke here], where I hadto pack the bike up complete into a cardboard box.

I was mostly camping, apart from in a few countrieswhere camping was logistically difficult. Sometimes peopleinvited me into their house, which was very kind of them,and in Thailand I was allowed to camp in Buddhist templeswhich was really special. In Azerbaijan, a family with norunning water invited me and a friend in, and they even

gave up their bed for us. This really showed me you don’thave to be rich to be kind.

Every day I was aiming for four meals a day, includingloads of carbohydrates. This was sometimes difficult toachieve, and I ended up eating a lot of spaghetti. If I wasable to pick fresh fruit it would make my day. I also atechicken head soup (which was not very nice) and Kangarootail, which was distinctly gristly.

The first two weeks were pretty tough; I was fairly fitbut not super fit. The Turkish Black Sea hills tested me andreduced me to tears at one point. I even had to push mybike up a few of them, but on the way down I did hit mytop speed of 71 kms per hour. The only two times I fell offmy bike in the whole year were in Turkey. I found this quitehard to deal with, but I fell off the other day in Cambridgeso I guess it just happens sometimes...

I prefer cycling in hot rather than cold, but sometimesit was too hot. In Greece and Spain it was regularly above

40 degrees centigrade, which meant I had to drink morethan 10 litres of water a day just to keep going. In contrast,it turns out that in the mountains around Beijing inNovember it gets pretty cold. I distinctly rememberbrushing ice off the tent in the morning. On anotheroccasion, near Chicago, a storm brought down a tree onthe tent, but luckily with my travel sewing kit I could repair it.

The hardest part of my cycle ride was crossing theNullarbor Desert in Australia. This amounted to twelvedays’ ride across 1,250 kms of virtually nothing. I couldn’tcarry all my water, so I had to rely on passing caravans togive me some. These caravans became known as my ‘waterangels’. It would often be two or three hours where Iwouldn’t see any cars, which was a little scary. Eleven daysof head wind also tested me mentally, particularly down a90-mile straight road.

Throughout the year I came across many differentanimals, some friendly ones, some not so friendly. I willnever forget being chased by wild dogs, cycling overpoisonous snakes, and accidently picking up dangerousspiders. The odd charging bull also raised my heart rate.

I learnt lots of things when cycling this year. First,99.9% of people are nice, they want to be friendly and helpyou out. Having a smile on your face opens doors for youwhich can improve your day massively. After surviving onthe basics, the small things can mean a great deal; I’m stillnot quite over how easy it is to make a cup of tea now. Alsomy first formal at Pembroke when I returned wasoutstanding! The lonely times have taught me to reallyappreciate my friends and family, too.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me out lastyear. I truly wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own.

I would still massively recommend cycle touring toanyone, literally anyone, so please email me if you have anyquestions: peterpedals2013@hotmail.com

Around the World in 380 DaysPeter Dudfield (2007), a.k.a. Peter Pedals

Peter Dudfield has been withPembroke College for sevenyears, studying mathematics asan undergrad and nowstudying for a PhD in FluidDynamics. His research focuseson two main areas: inter-seasonal heat storage, andcarbon capture and storage.This involves buildingmathematical models,numerical modelling, andlaboratory experiments. Hislove for cycling began sevenyears ago in France, and he hasnever looked back (acceptwhen turning right).

(Above) Berthoud Pass, Rockies,USA. (Above right) on the roadthrough the Nullarbor Desert.

Return to Pembroke.

12

By his own admission (no pun intended), Pembroke’sSenior Tutor Mark Wormald spent much of his timeas a student in The Other Place exhorting, cajoling,

even threatening people into the Magdalen Poetry Society.It was either such a success, or such was Mark’s devotionto poetry, that when he ascended here to Pembroke in 1994he brought the idea with him. True, the ‘Bring Your OwnBottle’ rule had not made for consistently judiciousmeetings: if one wanted one’s poem to be reviewed with anythoughtfulness or tact one had to hope that it appearedearly on the billing, before everyone’s critical faculties wentand the evening hastened to a boozy dégringolade. This andother lessons learned, Mark set about transplanting the seedof Magdalen’s Poetry Society to pastures new.

There were a number of reasons why I applied toPembroke, and if they were not clear reasons at the time,they became in hindsight very good ones: its jumbledprettiness, its academic stature, its venerability, its relativeanonymity on the tourist trail, the nooks and crannies youwould never hope to find in the vast, impersonal expansesof Trinity and John’s. I had a good friend also (successfully)applying. But in the complex business of college choice, oneof my prime motives was the existence of the PembrokePoetry Society. I cannot recall the precise wording of theexact sentence on the college webpage, but there it was: adedicated society for the poets or, in my case, the poetastersof Pembroke College. At my interview, I innocentlyenquired about the group. ‘Yes’, Mark said, ‘It meets in this room.’

‘This room’ was J4, Mark’s office, in which ten monthslater about forty people crushed themselves for the first‘Pemsoc’ meeting of Michaelmas 2012. The room is ashrine to Pembroke’s most famous bardic alumnus, TedHughes. In fact, the whole room seemed to be a metonymyfor Hughes; you sensed his spirit bound up in the fishingrods and the plaster cast of a defeated pike, hanging somenacingly on the walls. Posters of Hughes’ poems,underscored with line drawings of various pikes, confirmedit: Mark’s love of poetry was matched only by his love offishing. The majority of those present, however, shared onlythe former, and so, under the auspices of the aptly-namedPhoebe Power, the society resumed for another academicyear.

It continues to this day, in the rudest of health, followingmuch the same format as it did back then. Leadership ofthe group is always hereditary, never democratic, andhaving taken on the leadership myself I canconfirm that the issue of succession hasso far never provoked challengeor revolution! As long as Igive due notice of thef o r t h c o m i n gmeeting – andI haven’talways –t h e r ea r en o

complaints filed. People send their poems; I collate them,anthologise them, and print out about twenty-three copiesof them all, and at 7:30pm or thereabouts we sit down withwine and sugary foodstuffs (now funded centrally by theCollege) to discuss the writings. Conversation meandersand deviates but, hopefully, and given time, finds its wayback to the poem on the page.

I hope this doesn’t all sound like a belletristic jolly,because it isn’t: everything is done in earnest pursuit of well-thought, honest feedback, as much as we can squeeze intotwenty minutes on each poem. One of the best things aboutPemsoc is its heterogeneity: about half of our membersbelong to other colleges, and not all of them are artsstudents. And, believe me, we have some really good poets,and have said farewell to many others. When RowanWilliams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, joined usfor an evening in March 2013, he told me during theinterval that he was staggered by the quality of the poetry.He said that he was tempted to quote two lines from LauraBlomvall’s ‘Sonnet X’ in his next sermon: ‘Let us cling tothe Cross, to Christ’s suffering, / Let us breathe pure airthrough his collapsed lungs.’

Pembroke also has other creative writing ventures inaddition to its Poetry Society. Hannah Kaner (2011), whois to have her first novel published in the next few months,founded the ‘Writers’ Bloc’, Pemsoc’s sister society in prose.Last summer Pembroke hosted the ‘Creative Writing inCambridge’ programme, at which Pemsoc stalwart MichaelBrown honed the poems that would make up his book TheExhibit (he has since gone on to co-found the BaudelaireSociety at Gonville and Caius, an outfit with more of anemphasis on spontaneous composition). And NationalAcademy of Writing masterclasses with illustrious authorstake place in Pembroke every term – so often, in fact, thatone almost becomes used to having one’s efforts scrutinisedby the likes of Kazuo Ishiguro.

I will end with a word on Clive James (1939), whoundoubtedly qualifies for a list of great literary Valencianswhich includes Edmund Spenser, Richard Crashaw, ThomasGray, Christopher Smart and, of course, Ted Hughes. Clivelaunched his new collection of poems, Sentenced to Life, inPembroke on Friday 17th April. I wonder what he thinksof the fact that Cambridge’s English Literature Triposdoesn’t make provision for students to submit creativewriting to as part of their degree. In a way, it matters not ajot: creative writing, and creativity in general, is at least

thriving in Pembroke!

Creative Writing at PembrokeHarry Cochrane (2012)

Harry Cochrane is a third-yearreading English. He hails fromnorth Northumberland, a placethat would inspire anyone towrite poetry, and one that heloves about as much as heloves Pembroke. He takes anyopportunity to encouragepeople to read Dante,including this one.

13

1949Dick Stein writes: ‘I spent arewarding post-doctoral year atPembroke, 1949-50, as a USNational Research Council Fellowwhen I worked with the late SirGordon Sutherland at the thenColloid Science Department. Thisled to a productive career at theUniversity of Massachusetts,Amherst, from which I’ve beenretired for 23 years but remain inEmeritus Professor status. I valuethis experience in permitting meto interact with leaders of scienceand to enjoy the association withCambridge friends. I stronglyrecommend it to others.’

1954Peter Ball writes: ‘In the last IssueChristopher Price wrote that “thebest way to ward off senility iscontroversy, problems andaggravation.” I can suggestanother way: learn to play amusical instrument. I started toplay the cello (with no priormusical experience) when I was70. Nine years later I play in anorchestra, a cello quartet, goaway on cello playing courses,have weekly lessons and practisefor two hours a day. It all keepsme alert, keeps the brain tickingover and provides plenty ofhuman contact, though it tendsnot to be controversial oraggravating for most of the time.Try it. It’s never too late.’

1955Derek Lamport reports on adream come true: ‘In my 81st yearI have solved a problem raised bymy PhD research over fifty yearsago by the discovery ofhydroxyproline-richglycoproteins in plant cell walls.My latest paper identifies the roleof one group (the AGPs) ascentral to the regulation of plantgrowth; AGPs bind calcium ionsat the cell surface and behave asa dynamic capacitor, hence theSci-Fi-inspired title: “Back to thefuture with the AGP-calcium fluxcapacitor.” This has just beenpublished online in Annals ofBotany advance access ahead ofthe print edition. This “dreampaper” unifies three areas of plantscience: the role of the growthhormone auxin, calciumsignalling and glycoproteins ofthe cell surface. Dreamsmaterialized thanks to Pembroke.’Derek adds to hiscorrespondence with me, when Iremarked that the College iscelebrating the 30th anniversaryof the admission of women: ‘Iarrived at Pembroke within abouta week of finishing my National

Service as a corporal (air wirelessfitter instructor) in the RAF where“orders is orders” only to begreeted, with a slight change inpace, by a notice on W. A. Camps’(the Senior Tutor’s) notice-boardwhich read: “Gentlemen arereminded that women are notallowed in College before 8o'clock in the morning”...Nevertheless’, Derek continues,‘women featured prominently atPembroke in the 1950s under theguise of madrigal singers duringthe special monthlyperformances at MeredithDewey’s Music Evenings.’

1958Terence Parkin writes: ‘I steppeddown from my second 3-yearstint as Chairman of the ParisDecorative and Fine Arts Society,handing over to anotherCambridge man, Dr Terry Quinn. Iremain, however, as Hon. Adviserto the Academy of SocialSciences in Beijing and to theChinese Canadian Writers’Association. I have been re-appointed as Hon. Senior Tutor atShaw College in the ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong, where Igave a high table dinner talk.Under my pen name of AndrewParkin I gave three poetryreadings in Canada in Summer,2014.’

1959Yorick Wilks is now ProfessorEmeritus of Artificial Intelligenceat the University of Sheffield andlives in Oxford, but works part-time at the Florida Institute ofHuman and Machine Cognition.He has been awarded theLovelace Medal (for research) bythe British Computer Society, theZampolli Prize by the EuropeanLanguage Research Association,and the Lifetime AchievementAward by the Association forComputational Linguistics.

1961Stephen Halliday writes, ‘On 1stMay I had the unusual experienceof giving a talk while travelling ina circle 70 feet above London.Each pod of the London Eye wasoccupied by a different speaker. Iwas talking to my audience aboutthe engineer Sir JosephBazalgette who built much ofVictorian London, including theVictoria Embankment which laybefore us on the opposite bank ofthe Thames. In other pods: KenLivingstone (a very genialcharacter) was talking aboutHerbert Morrison; Claire Tomalin(rather serious) was discussingPepys; Sir Andrew Motion wastalking about John Keats; and,intriguingly, Kate Kray wasdiscussing her relatives Ronnieand Reggie. A memorableexperience, unlikely to berepeated.’

Colin Richards writes to tell methat almost fifty years afterreading geography, archaeologyand anthropology he has takenan Open University First-Class(Hons.) degree in history – his firstlove. Immodestly [that is hisword, not mine! Ed.] he claims tohave fulfilled the commentsmade about him by MeredithDewey: ‘I'm so glad you foundsomething you were good at; younever did when you were here’!

1962Peter Taylor was, in 2014,presented with the BAFTA SpecialAward. This was in recognition ofhis achievements as one of themost distinguished makers ofdocumentary programmes forthe BBC for over 40 years. Peterhas won a variety of awardsincluding an OBE for Services toBroadcast Journalism (2002), andthe Royal Television Society’sLifetime Achievement Award in2014. For more details see:www.bafta.org/television/features/a-tribute-to-peter-taylor-obe.

1964Stephen Oxlade writes withgratifying enthusiasm about theMartlet over the years, ‘and thislast one was no exception. Mylife-long friend, Tony Campbell,was my first-year neighbour on P-staircase and Patrick Derham wasa pupil of mine at PangbourneCollege, where I was Head ofChemistry. I recently met myHeadmaster from Pangbourne,who told me the story of Patrick’sentry.’ [Peter Points, the then-Headmaster of Pangbourne, onceinvited me to speak to the SixthFormers, in my capacity of

Pembroke’s Tutor for Admissions.He particularly recommended apupil, Patrick Derham. How righthe was! Ed.]

1966Richard Slater spent the last fiveyears photographing and filmingpeople all over London, and theend result was a free admissionexhibition entitled ‘People inLondon. One photographer. Fiveyears. The life of a city’, which ranat the Royal Geographical Societyin London from 8 September to17 October 2014. The exhibitionconveyed the astonishing ethnic,social and religious diversity inthe city, as well as theentertainment and drama to befound on its streets, and the funto be had at its many seasonalfestivals and celebrations. Richardbrought together over 400 of hisphotographs, as well as videointerviews. There were somespecially created maps whichshowed where the photographswere taken and a sound-track oftypical London sounds completesthe experience. For more details,go to: www.peopleinlondon.com/

1967Peter Kingdon Booker and Lynnemoved to a new life in the softerclimate of the Algarve in 1998,and after completing their housenear Tavira they founded theAlgarve History Association(AHA). Peter gives monthlylectures to Association membersin aspects of Portuguese historyand aims to raise awareness ofPortuguese culture among themultinational Anglophoneexpatriates in the Algarve, andLynne subsequently creates thenewspaper articles. Althoughprincipally concerned with thehistory of the Algarve, of Portugaland the Portuguese Empire, theAHA has also celebrated anumber of bicentenaries ofPeninsular War events, andarranges visits to historic sites inand near the Algarve. Peter hasalso lectured on various aspectsof Portuguese history in Lisbon,Elvas, Porto, London and recently

From the GossipEditorI have used the form of nameswith which letters have beensigned, and have throughoutomitted titles. The date aboveeach entry is the date ofmatriculation.

N.B.When sending in news (180 words maximum please!),do indicate your matriculationdate, and, if possible, that ofother Old Members youmention.

Gossip should preferably besent by email to:cgw20@cam.ac.uk

Alternatively, send by post to: Colin WilcocksonPembroke CollegeCambridge, CB2 1RF

Notification about publishedbooks should be sent to: Nick McBride The Editor Pembroke Annual GazettePembroke College Cambridge, CB2 IRF Or by email to him at:njm33@cam.ac.uk

With best wishes, Colin Wilcockson

Gossip

at Castle Hedingham in Essex forthe Friends of the BritishCemetery at Elvas.

Marwan Nusair, writes: ‘Myupdate is of the “bad news, goodnews” variety. I had a stroke inSeptember 2013 and had toundergo a fair bit of therapy,primarily to restore function tomy right arm and leg. Now forthe good news part: I haverecovered almost completely andlast May I was offered, andaccepted, a very good jobdesigning radios for a companyin the area here near Cincinnati. Iam glad to say that it has turnedout to be all that was hoped forso I expect to work indefinitely!!The website Linked-In hasallowed me to make contact witha few of my Pembrokecontemporaries, and I am quitepleased with that.’

1970Laurence Weatherley writes: ‘Ihave just been appointed to theAlbert P. Learned DistinguishedProfessorship of ChemicalEngineering at the University ofKansas, USA. I have been at theUniversity of Kansas since 2004 asChair of the Department ofChemical and PetroleumEngineering. I have recentlyaccepted an invitation from theUniversity to serve a third 5-yearterm. Prior to 2004 I held theestablished Chair and Headshipof Chemical Engineering at theUniversity of Canterbury, NewZealand, and prior to that, afterleaving Pembroke in 1973,academic and industryappointments in the UK. I did myPhD in the Department ofChemical Engineering under thesupervision of Robin Turner[Fellow of Pembroke 1962-79].’

1972Paul Evans was ordained Deaconat Exeter Cathedral on 18thSeptember 2014. He will beserving as a Self SupportingMinister in Torquay, Devon.

1973Christopher Johnson writes: ‘Atthe end of March I was elected atown councillor (conseillermunicipal) for the French town ofSaverdun where I live in thedépartement of Ariège, south ofToulouse.’

Steven Schwitzer has sent me anarticle, with a photograph, thatappeared in The Cholmeleian (theMagazine of Highgate School)Winter 2013 issue. Its subject isArnold Barlow (1935). Afterschool at Highgate, Barlowmatriculated at Pembroke, wherehe joined the CambridgeUniversity Air Squadron. He hadarticles and photographspublished while he was anundergraduate in The Aeroplane.Tragically, he was killed in a flyingaccident in 1938. His portrait ison display at Cranwell, wherethere is also a prize fund in hisname.

1976Ralph Martin, who leads theVisual Computing ResearchGroup within the Cardiff Schoolof Computer Science &Informatics, has been honouredwith China’s Friendship Award –the nation’s highest honourawarded to foreigners. He wasnominated for this award byChina’s top University for scienceand engineering – TsinghuaUniversity in Beijing – where he isa Guest Professor in theDepartment of ComputerScience and Technology. Ralphremarks: ‘I have beencollaborating with Tsinghua since2001 and this award isrecognition of that long-standingand successful partnership... Ourwork together has achievedsome outstanding results overthe years; both research groupshere in Cardiff and at Tsinghuahave gone from strength tostrength, improving the qualityof their research significantly tothe point where both institutionsare now undisputedly producingworld-leading research. We havehelped each other to get there.’

1982Ian Carter writes, ‘After thirtyyears in school teaching, the lastten as Headmaster of PooleGrammar School I have hung upmy gown and saw 2014 as a year

for change. This resulted from acombination of the effectsMichael Gove’s (then Secretary ofState) policies and MichaelWilshaw’s (Her Majesties ChiefInspector) pronouncements havehad on the ability of schools toprovide a well-roundededucation coupled with a desireto do something different. Mychange of tack has resulted in anew home in Alderney, the onlytrue Channel Island, and takingup a range of new opportunities,including training as a laypreacher in the Methodist churchand providing advice oneducational, social andenvironmental issues for theStates of Alderney. I have not leftthe educational world altogetherand provide consultancyexpertise to Ofqual on new GCSEand GCE qualifications. The keypoint now is working to my owntimetable and enjoying adifferent lifestyle with my wifeSuzy (Hughes Hall 1982).Alderney is only 3 miles by 1½miles with 2000 inhabitants andno Pembroke members that I amaware of, so if any member sailsor flies in there will always be aglass of something and a warmwelcome awaiting you. Alderney– so close – so different and notas it has been characterised: 2000drunks clinging to a rock!’

Alexander Games has justpublished his first novel. It iscalled Rydon Hall and is availableon Amazon. Alex read Classicsand then became a journalistbefore finding his vocation inteaching. He tells me, ‘The noveldescribes a calamitous school tripto Egypt which is overtaken bythe Arab Spring. It encompasseschild abduction, inappropriateparent-teacher relations,unwitting cannibalism,Aristophanic self-revelation andschoolboy incineration whileseeking to answer the question:“Is Latin taught better in a cave ora classroom?” ’ Alex also workedon the Literary Reviewmagazinewith Auberon Waugh, the son ofEvelyn – to whose Decline andFall, Alex remarks, his novel tipsits cap: ‘I cannot imagine anyonereading this and not laughing,’says Alex. ‘Despite the appallinglypoor taste of some sections, thisis a very funny novel for a veryfrightening world.’ Alex left hisposition at a prep school for TiffinBoys’ School in September. Thenew posting includes an overseasschool trip, which he hopes willin no way resemble the eventsdescribed in his novel. Readerresponse so far has been

rapturous. The paper edition ofRydon Hall costs £8.99, and iscurrently £3 on Kindle.

Alastair Merrill, the ScottishGovernment’s Chief ProcurementOfficer and Commercial Directorsince 2009, is appointed VicePrincipal for Governance andPlanning at St Andrew’sUniversity with effect fromFebruary 2015.

1983Richard J. Millar was promoted toPro-Vice-Chancellor (AcademicPlanning, Partnerships andInternational Affairs) at UlsterUniversity in August 2014.

1986Brian Cuthbert is now anEdinburgh-based environmentalconsultant and has during thelast few years enjoyed workingon Environmental ImpactAssessments (EIA) and ecologyprojects in Uganda, Uzbekistanand Ukraine. However, heconsiders that a recent project inthe Adriatic may have been theresult of an unfortunateadministrative error, because if ithad been in Uruguay instead ofMontenegro he would have beenable to complete the set of fourcountries beginning with theletter U but without the wordUnited in the title!

1991Gil Asherie writes: ‘On 3 July 2014my wife Nathalie gave birth toour third daughter, Elior, a sisterto Noam and Shai.’

1994Martin Mok graduated fromPembroke in 1997, the year inwhich Hong Kong was returnedto the People’s Republic of China.He tells me: ‘I started working as amanagement consultant atMcKinsey and Company for twoyears, then switched to bemaking private equityinvestments at Goldman SachsPrincipal Investment Area untilthe end of 2001. I joined InvestorAsia Ltd to manage the USD322m Investor Capital PartnersAsia Fund, a private equity fundinvesting in Asia buyouts. In 2006,EQT, which currently managesEuro 22b of private equity funds,acquired Investor Asia Ltd. In2013, I was part of the six-partnerteam who raised the Euro 1.1bEQT Mid Market fund to invest inbuyouts in Nordics, Germany andAsia.’ Martin is married toCatherine Lam. They have twosons, 6-year-old Ethan and 2-yearold Nathan.

1997Jim Ford and Caroline Ford (néeEarp) (2000) are pleased toannounce the birth of DanielWilliam Ford in October 2013.

Chris Hutchings read Maths, buttells me that he is now having amore successful career in music,winning the New London SingersComposition Prize 2012 as well asthe Chigwell Choir YoungComposers Competition 2014.His choral pieces have beenperformed in Scotland, England,USA, Canada, and South Africa.He and his wife Ashley now havea daughter, Robin. (He adds thathe is still waiting for thePembroke College Chapel Choirto perform any of his music!)

1998Phil Symes tells me that ‘underthe pretentious and affectedstage-name Philip Kingslan John’[his words, not mine, Ed.], for thepast couple of years he has beenrunning his own theatrecompany in the South Westcalled Four of Swords Theatre,specialising in site-specific multi-media literary adaptations. Thecompany has won rave reviewsand entertained sell-outaudiences at its lively andsubversive interpretations of DrJekyll and Mr Hyde, Macbeth,Doctor Faustus and Gawain and

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the Green Knight. ‘That Englishdegree is being put to good useafter all!’ he remarks. There areimages on their websitewww.four-of-swords.com. Philcontinues, ‘We also visit schools,facilitate and produce workshopsfor young people, are in themidst of working on multi-mediastudy aids produced by CUP, andhave recently worked on a film-making project with the CentralDevon Personalised LearningService for students excludedfrom mainstream education. Sofar we have only performed inDevon, but look this year toventure further afield. We wouldlove to entertain any Pembrokepeeps in need of a good nightout!

1999Henrietta Stock (née Lawson)writes, ‘My husband (AndrewStock 1999) and I welcomed ourthird child, Beatrix Shaoni, on20th September 2014. She is asister for Frances and Isambard.Her middle name, Shaoni, comesfrom my pen-friend in Indiawhom I have met only once –whilst researching my MEngproject there in 2002.’ Gratifyingly Henrietta adds, ‘We always look forward toreceiving the Martlet.’

Justin Jones took up the post ofAssociate Professor in Study ofReligion at the University ofOxford in April 2014 and is now a Fellow at the ‘other’ Pembroke.

Eleanor Brown and Tom Perkin(both 1999) announce the birthof Frederick Edward KitsonPerkin. Frederick was born in StMary’s Hospital, Westminister, on1 February 2015. He is their firstchild and the first grandchild ofRoger Perkin (1966).

2001Ellie Oldershaw writes, ‘In May2014 Ellie Oldershaw (néePickering) (2001) and Timwelcomed their first child,Alexander.’ She then adds afamiliar lament, ‘He is a fantastic, happy chap but has unfortunately not yetdeveloped a love of sleep!’

2002Mathias Kläui (1999) and MiriamDierenbach-Kläui (néeDierenbach) report, ‘We arehappy to announce the birth ofour son Julian Immanuel inOctober 2014. The family is welland everyone is getting used toeach other!’

2003Jennifer Dean (née Neilson, 2003)and Anthony Dean (Emmanuel2002) announce the birth of theirtriplets Emilia Charlotte, FinlayJames and Thomas Alexander,who were born in Esbjerg,Denmark on 24th June 2014. ‘Bigsister Eloise (born October 2012)is delighted to have newplaymates, even if the parents arerather tired!’

Colin Leonard writes: ‘In the lasttwo years I have been combiningmedical training with sailingcompetitively in the OlympicLaser Dinghy. In late 2013 I hadsix months away from medicineto sail full-time, ranking third inIreland and competing in theEuropean championships, andWorld Championships andranking in the top 150 sailors inthe world. I competed in Omanat the World Championshipsagainst the best and brightest ofthe sailing world. On my return tothe working world, I wassuccessful in gaining a trainingnumber in Ear, Nose and Throatsurgery. I am now enjoying amore relaxed approach to sailing,and the new challenge ofspecialising in my chosensurgical speciality.’

Justin Lathia writes: ‘I justreceived great news that mylaboratory has been awarded aSontag FoundationDistinguished Scientist Award.This award is quite prestigiousand will allow us to continuelooking at how stem cellsignaling interfaces with theimmune system in malignantbrain tumors.’

Matthew Wilburn King writes, ‘Ihave been appointed thePresident and Chairman of theLiving GREEN Foundation,

establishing fiscally sponsoredprojects for people with greatideas and the courage to make apositive contribution towardsocial and environmental well-being. Living GREEN envisions aworld full of inspired donors andclients who advance their causesin ways that are effective,conscientious, and innovative.The US based not-for-profit501(c)3 accomplishes its goals byproviding critical support andpromoting the goals ofenvironmentalists,philanthropists, socialentrepreneurs, visionaries, andavant-garde leaders throughvisionary communications,creative strategies, andintegrated technologies.

In this way, their impact is notlimited to any one cause, butexpands exponentially to theindividuals and critical social and environmental issues ourdonor/clients affect. Learn more at livinggreennetwork.org |facebook.com/GreenGrantsWorldwide |facebook.com/DrMatthewKing |@matthewkingphd’

2006Rachel G Hoffman matriculatedwith her PhD in History for herdissertation, ‘Political MurderPlots in Germany, 1840s-1914’.She continues at Cambridge,now as an Ordinary Fellow inHistory at King’s College and

as a Research Fellow on theLeverhulme-funded project onConspiracy and Democracy.Rachel Smith (née Walden) writes that she married AlexSmith (Downing 2005) ‘in awonderful ceremony at KentHouse, Knightsbridge, on 19thOctober 2013. It was fantastic tocelebrate with so many friendsand family, including myPembroke Mothers. We areactually both Classics teachers,too, so keeping our studies alive!’

2008Mayowa Osundiji writes, ‘My wife and I welcomed ourdaughter, Mariam Alice Osundiji,on 13 August 2014.’

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Nonsuch PalaceFitzwilliam Museum, nineteen seventy-six:post-supervision, you climb those stepsopposite The Little Rose head full of Malory and robbers picking rings from the fingers of the dead. First-timer. You don’t know what you don’t know. Inside, a world of homage – Sickerts to die for, Hogarth’s couple, before and after, the face of Minerva on a giant vasein a stairwell, a Tintoretto, Elizabethan miniatures of feckless libertines, Michelin Man armour for Henry the Eighth, and Nonsuch Palacein its heyday, where the thin white greyhounds lead the way, all four legs off the ground, fore and aft, impossible, going nowhere fast.

Poet’s Corner

Peter Carpenter (1976) currently teaches atTonbridge School. His sixth collection of poetry JustLike That is a ‘New and Selected’ that ‘communicatesa sense of confident and growing literary power’ (PNReview). His chapter on creative writing appeared inThe Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British andIrish Poetry, and he has been a Visiting Fellow at theuniversities of Warwick and Reading. He co-directsthe legendary Worple Press(www.worplepress.co.uk.).