Wren Digitisation Spying on Your Friends Magpie & Stump Dylan
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Issue 19 • Autumn 2014 Wren Digitisation Spying on Your Friends Magpie & Stump Dylan Thomas & I Tennyson at Trinity Trinity University Challenge 2 Welcome Contents Issue 19 | Autumn 2014 3 Wren Digitisation 4 Spying on Your Friends Our current issue presents a diverse collection of articles. 6 A Little History of Magpie Dan Larsen (e2013), continues the theme of the previous issue and Stump in discussing British code-breaking during and after the First World War. Harriet Cartledge (2011) presents the results of 8 her research in the archives of the Magpie & Stump debating Telethon society. Andrew Sinclair (1955) gives an impressionistic 10 account of the highs and lows of filmingUnder Milk Wood with, Dylan Thomas and I among others, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. 12 Professor David McKitterick (e1986) reports on the digitisation Tennyson at Trinity of manuscripts in the Wren Library. Michael Plygawko (2012) 14 describes the Cambridge literary circle of which Tennyson was University Challenge a notable member. In response to Trinity’s recent success in University Challenge, Claire Hall (2011) interviews the captains 16 of the winning teams of 1995 and 2014. Events My best thanks go to all these contributors for their The Fountain is published twice yearly by the willingness to share their knowledge and experiences with Alumni Relations & Development Office. fellow alumni. The views expressed in this Newsletter do not necessarily represent the views of Dr Neil Hopkinson (e1983) Trinity College, Cambridge. Fellow, Editor Editor Dr Neil Hopkinson (e1983), Fellow Acknowledgments Trinity College would like to thank all those who have supported the production of this edition of The Fountain. © Copyright Trinity College 2014 3 By Professor David Below bottom left: Image of a scribe, the monk Wren Digitisation Eadwine, taken from the Canterbury or Eadwine McKitterick FBA (e1986) Psalter. Dates from the 12th century. Below: 12th century medical manuscript. For the last few months, supported by gifts from alumni, a small team in the Wren Library has been working on a project to digitise the College’s collection of medieval manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts are well For centuries, the College has welcomed known. The thirteenth-century Trinity readers to use manuscripts in the Wren. Apocalypse has page after page of This, of course, continues: no scanned bright blue and fiery red illustrations. version can tell you everything about The twelfth-century Eadwine Psalter, a manuscript. By making these scans made in Canterbury in the twelfth free to the world we are continuing century, has long been of interest for in the same tradition of sharing with historians of the French language. Most everyone the treasures for which we people know it thanks to the great are responsible. Volumes are scanned portrait of the scribe after whom the to a high resolution from cover to cover. manuscript is now named, while at the Thanks to the quality of the scans, it is end is a contemporary plan of Canterbury possible not just to read the texts, but Cathedral and its environs. In literature also to enlarge to a scale that allows there are manuscripts of Chaucer one to see all the details of the scribes and the only illustrated manuscript of and artists at work. The final digitised Piers Plowman. A thirteenth-century versions are being made available to manuscript given in the eighteenth anyone who wishes to see them, via the century is familiar to historians of Library website. medicine thanks to its graphic pictures of surgical procedures. Other people The biggest challenge is not in the would put at the head of their list the scanning – a relatively straightforward That is a reminder that this is very much eleventh-century copy of Bede’s Historia process in itself. Rather more time a collaborative project. While money ecclesiastica, or the eleventh-century is needed to check that each image from alumni makes this possible, the Gospels, one of the finest of all Anglo- is of a high quality; that the images contribution of the College’s computing Saxon manuscripts, given by Thomas are in the right order; and that each department, as well as others in the Wren Nevile. These are some of the famous manuscript can be searched for who have specialist skills, mean that this books. Many others cry out for further what individual readers might want. is a partnership between College and and deeper study. The digitisation project Some years ago, and long before we alumni. By the end of this year we expect aims to include everything. thought of the present programme, to have finished between 20 and 25 per the whole of M.R.James’s great cent of the collection. For the work to Besides these manuscripts, we have catalogue of the western manuscripts be completed, we will need the help of been taking the opportunity to include was put online. Though now over a further generous alumni. Meanwhile we some other books, among them Milton’s century old, it is still an excellent route have an experienced and enthusiastic autograph manuscript of his poems into the collections, and it is being team whom we do not want to lose. (including Comus and Lycidas), and gradually updated as time allows. Now Newton’s own copy of the first edition links are being made from James’s If you would like to support the Wren of his Principia (1687) annotated in descriptions to the scans. Digitisation, please contact the Alumni preparation for the second edition. Relations & Development Office So far, well over two hundred on: 01223 761527. A list of digitised manuscripts have been added to the manuscripts can be found here: website. The reaction from people all http://sites.trin.cam.ac.uk/james/ over the world has been overwhelmingly browse.php?show=virtual_listing encouraging, many readers comparing the Trinity website favourably with those Professor David McKitterick (e1986) of other libraries. This is a fast-moving is Librarian and technology in many ways, and so each currently Vice-Master library that ventures into such projects of the College. has an advantage over its predecessors, as libraries learn from each other. 4 The Fountain | Autumn 2014 | Issue 19 Spying on Your Friends: By Daniel Larsen (e2013) Breaking American Codes in the First World War Recent revelations that the American MI1(b) began the war working to break National Security Agency (NSA), German army radio codes. In 1915, as assisted by the British Government the Western front bogged down to a Communications Headquarters stalemate, the German military rapidly (GCHQ), have targeted Germany and replaced its radio communications other friendly countries – including, with telegraph lines, which the British most memorably, the NSA’s intercepting could not intercept. The codebreaking Angela Merkel’s telephone calls – have group suddenly found itself with little caused widespread public interest to do. They turned to trying to break and, in some quarters, consternation. neutral diplomatic codes, beginning Yet throughout modern history, with those of the United States. The countries have sought to intercept Americans did little to make it difficult the communications not only of their for them: the U.S. Department of State adversaries but also of their friends. used the same codebook, unchanged, from 1910 to 1918. They made it even The most famous codebreaking easier by arranging the codebook organization in British history is that of alphabetically. It took the inexperienced GCHQ’s predecessor at Bletchley Park, group some time, but by the end of 1915, whose breaking of German codes in MI1(b) succeeded in reconstructing it. the Second World War helped shorten The British then had unlimited access the conflict and saved countless lives. to virtually all American diplomatic But GCHQ’s history stretches back telegrams that crossed the Atlantic. to the founding in 1914 of two code- breaking organizations: a naval group One might imagine that breaking these the Americans’ peace efforts as a named Room 40, and a lesser known codes gave the British a significant potential way of extricating them from army organization called MI1(b). The advantage over their neutral American an unwinnable war, and they recognized British were a bit late to the game. Other cousins – even, perhaps, the ability to and feared the United States’ countries – France, Russia, Austria- help manipulate them into joining the considerable economic and financial Hungary, among others – already war. In reality, at least between 1915 and power. As the British dug themselves possessed longstanding diplomatic 1917, the British probably would have deep into debt, American loans became codebreaking units. been better off if MI1(b) had left the State paramount for the continuation of the Department’s codes entirely alone. war. The Allies, they believed, had to do Room 40 focused initially on breaking what they could to keep the Americans German naval codes, but eventually The British government under Prime content; otherwise, the war would go it expanded its efforts mainly to Minister H. H. Asquith was bitterly from quagmire to disaster. enemy diplomatic codes. Most divided about the role of the United famously, it successfully deciphered States in the Allied war effort. One And so these diplomatic decrypts the Zimmermann Telegram a couple faction saw the Americans largely as provided the British with ammunition for of months before the United States impotent and unwelcome interlopers. their own infighting, rather than helping entered the war on the Allied side in Their efforts at mediating a compromise improve their policy towards the United early 1917. Germany had offered three peace were regarded as dangerous, States. MI1(b) gave the War Office and, U.S. states to Mexico in exchange for an their objections to aspects of the often, the Admiralty the ability to keep alliance, and the exposure of the plot to British blockade as damaging a vital a close watch not only on the American a grateful American government caused tool in winning the war.