November 2011 | issue 34 MAGDALENE MATTERS the newsletter of Magdalene College Cambridge MAGDALENE MAT TERS CONTENTS November 2011 | issue 34 Access All Areas PAGE 6 Fellows’ News 3 Access All Areas 6 New Events at Magdalene 8 Royal Navy in Afghanistan Royal Navy in Afghanistan 9 PAGE 9 The Cambridge Project for the Book Trust 12 The Cambridge Members’ News 14 Project for the Book Trust Events & Reunions 16 PAGE 12 COMMENT from the Development Director Dear Member, of you to contribute to Magdalene this year and are aiming for 15% of our Members to give to the 2011/12 Annual Fund. As I watched our new fresh faced students, both We will be writing to every member later in the year and some undergraduates and BA’s, line up for their matriculation of you will also be given the opportunity to receive a call photograph in unseasonably warm autumn sunshine I was from a current student to hear about the College during our pondering on their journey for the next few years. They forthcoming telephone campaign at the end of Lent term. have yet to experience ‘Cambridge’: a bop, the bumps, the The Alumni & Development Office has gone balls, the Varsity match at Twickenham, the Boat Race, the through a number of changes. The new team consists Footlights, the Cambridge Union, late night snacks at of KEVIN BENTLEY, Deputy Development Director, Gardies – supervisions and Tripos examinations. CHARLES COOK, Development Officer (database & They will make friends for life at Magdalene as you did. website) and EMMA TUNBRIDGE, Alumni & Development We have introduced a number of new events which make Assistant. They have already met a number of you and are it possible for you and your families to meet old friends at always happy to help with your enquires, process requests College. I hope you will enjoy the report on page 8 about our for merchandise, take your bookings for reunions, Non- first ever Family Day and our inaugural annual Donors’ Day. Resident Guest Nights and all of our events. Please refer to We are also introducing the first Annual Donors’ Report the back page for forthcoming events as well as the website inside this issue of Magdalene Matters. I hope you will www.magdalenecambridge.com and our facebook group. find it of interest and be persuaded to contribute to this Please don’t hesitate to contact us to share your year’s Annual Fund. Every gift, large and small makes a real comments, views and questions. difference. During the last financial year over 11% of you gave a gift to the College. Some Cambridge colleges are CORINNE LLOYD (2010) now persuading more than a fifth of their alumni to make a EDITOR AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR donation every year. We would also like to encourage more [email protected] FELLOWS’ NEWS A neW President For Magdalene – Professor Michael Carpenter (1972) Professor Carpenter’s research interests in Earth Sciences relate mainly to the physics of minerals and functional oxides. Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy is the method he uses for measuring large variations of elastic and anelastic properties of crystals in response to changes in temperature and magnetic field. He writes in the College Magazine that “the President says grace at dinner, is the first Fellow out of Chapel, is supposed to tell the Master what he can and cannot do, is invariably polite to guests, tries to keep the Fellows happy and maintains as low a profile as possible on any difficult issues. There are many social functions to attend, of course, including Guest Nights, Matriculation, Half- way and Graduation dinners, reunions and development events. Expectations for my Presidency must be kept low but the duties and challenges of the next five years will be accepted with as much calmness and good grace as can be sustained….current members of the College are fortunate to be part of a warm community with debate, friendships, The Fellows of Magdalene elected PROFESSOR MICHAEL generous colleagues, banter and plenty of professional hard CARPENTER as their next President, for five years from work applied to the running of the College. All Presidents October 2011. He has been associated with the College since seek to promote academic distinction and to support the arriving as a “very green undergraduate” in 1972, with only quality of experience that Fellows provide for each other a few absences over the intervening years. He became a and for College staff, undergraduates and graduate students graduate student in 1975, a Bye-Fellow in 1977, a Research alike. I would like to maintain this tradition.” Fellow in 1982, a Fellow in 1984 and finally a Professorial Fellow in 2001. We wish him the very best. “I am delighted to be handing on the Presidency to Professor Michael Carpenter, the College’s first Natural Scientist President since Professor Peter Grubb. The President has a lot of work to do behind the scene, as a kind of cross between stage manager and shop steward. Michael has just the combination of kindliness and authority that is needed for this demanding but rewarding role.” FROM THE OUT-GOING PRESIDENT: PROFESSOR NIck BOYLE (1964) 3 MAGDALENE COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE FELLOWS’ NEWS PROFESSOR DR NEIL JONES the Behavioural Ecology and Tropical NIck BOYLE (1994) has been Life-Histories in African birds and (1964) hosted appointed Literary DR MAHAJAN works on Biological a conference Director of the and Soft Systems at the Cavendish from 29 to 31 Selden Society Laboratory. DR LUCY DONKIN September with in succession becomes a Teaching Bye-Fellow the cryptic title ‘Urworte’ (part to Professor Sir John Baker. Readers in History of Art. MR MICHAEL of the title of a poem by Goethe), might be interested to know that the HETHERINGTON (2005) becomes a devoted to various aspects of his President of the society – Lord Chief Bye-Fellow working in the field of Late work and arranged by former Justice Judge (1959) – is also a Member Sixteenth-Century Literature and research students and colleagues in of Magdalene and that Professor Bill MR MATTHEW TOINTON (2001), also College to mark his 65th birthday. Cornish (1990) is a member of the a Bye-Fellow, studies Mathematics. Participants came from Germany, Society’s Council, a combination DR ALEXANDER THOM (2001) is the USA and Oxford to read papers from one College probably without a Teaching Bye-Fellow in Chemistry on literature, philosophy, theology precedent since the Society was splitting his time between Imperial and the future of higher education. founded in 1887. College London and Magdalene. MR NICHOLAS RAYMONT, Assistant PROFESSOR DR JEFFERY Bursar/College Accountant, and EAMON DUFFY LEWINS (1985) DR MICHAEL RANDS, Executive (1979) has been presented the Director of the Cambridge appointed to Magdalene Prize Conservation Initiative, both become the University Competition Fellow-Commoners. PROFESSOR of Durham’s (the Thomson RAYMOND GILLESPIE, is the new Academic Advisory Committee for Challenge) to the 11th Joint European Parnell Fellow whose research interests Ushaw College Library, part of the Thermodynamics Conference in are eclectic but focus mainly on the rescue project for the manuscript, Germany in June 2011. transformation of Ireland in the rare book and “heritage” collections sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. of England’s oldest Roman Catholic We welcome the following new Fellows Seminary, closed earlier this year. to Magdalene. DR LUKE SkINNER He has also been appointed to an joins us as an Official Fellow in Honorary Professorship of the History Palaeoclimate Research as does of Catholicism, in the Department of DR EMILY SO who becomes an Theology at Durham. The text of his Official Fellow in Architecture. Radio 4 series “Ten Popes who Shook the World” has been published by Yale DR LILY CHANG University Press. is the new Henry Lumley Research DR ALLEGRE Fellow and HADIDA (2003) DR ALEX BUELL was awarded the holds the Nevile Best Paper Prize at Fellowship in Chemistry. DR CLAIRE the International LYE joins us as the Herschel Smith Association of non-stipendiary Research Fellow Arts and Cultural Affairs (AIMAC) in Developmental Biology. Conference in Antwerp, for her paper DR CLAIRE SPOTTISWOODE entitled “You can win the critics and and DR SUMEET MAHAJAN join have nothing to eat…” (with us as the new Raymond & co-authors Renaud Legoux and Beverly Sackler Research Fellows. François Carrillat). DR SPOTTISWOODE researches into 4 MAGDALENE MATTERS FELLOWS’ NEWS FELLOWS’ NEWS Opening THE EtrUscan Frontier A Magdalene team was at the heart of fieldwork on the frontier between Gubbio and Perugia near Assisi in central Italy over the course of the summer. Once the Magdalene choir had tested the accommodation, Magdalene Choir in Italy a larger archaeological team moved in to excavate the Etruscan site of Col di Marzo, which had been placed by jonathan hellyer-jones (2002) strategically astride the frontier with a commanding view director of music back towards Perugia. Excavation not only proved that this frontier site was established during the fifth century This year’s Choir Tour to Italy was the first that has resulted BC, but had been preceded by earlier occupation in the from direct help from another Fellow. The deus ex machina- Bronze Age. Furthermore, invaluable information was like appearance of Dr Simon Stoddart’s offer brought untold uncovered of Etruscan terracing, living areas, metallurgical happiness to the Precentor and his family since Simon, using activity, working of antler/horn and processing/storage his longstanding contacts in the Perugia area, arranged for of agricultural production (peas, beans, wheat). us to give concerts in Perugia and Assisi cathedrals, in Castel Rigone (a hill-top settlement with commanding views), in a former monastic refectory in Gubbio and to accompany a tour of a ruined abbey, delighting the other visitors with music at several points in the tour.