EVENTS & REUNIONS FOR 2008 ISSUE 7 SPRING 2008 GONVILLE & CAIUS COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE Lent Full Term ends . Friday 14 March MAs’ Dinner . Friday 28 March Caius Club Dinner . Friday 4 April Telephone Campaign begins. Saturday 5 April Tokyo Reception . Wednesday 9 April Annual Gathering (1975, 1976 and 1977) . Friday 11 April Hong Kong Dinner for Members of the Court of Benefactors . Monday 14 April Hong Kong Reception . Tuesday 15 April Mumbai Reception . Thursday 17 April New Delhi Reception . Saturday 19 April Easter Full Term begins . Tuesday 22 April Easter Full Term ends . Friday 13 June May Week Party for Benefactors . Saturday 14 June Caius Club Bumps Event. Saturday 14 June May Ball . Tuesday 17 June Caius Medical Association Meeting & Dinner . Saturday 21 June Graduation Tea . Thursday 26 June Annual Gathering (up to & including 1956). Tuesday 1 July Admissions Open Days . Thursday 3 & Friday 4 July Annual Gathering (1984, 1885 and 1986) . Saturday 20 September 1958 Golden Reunion . Monday 29 September Michaelmas Full term begins . Tuesday 7 October New York and Toronto Visit . October (dates tba) Commemoration Lecture . Sunday 16 November Commemoration of Benefactors Service . Sunday 16 November Commemoration Feast . Sunday 16 November Michaelmas Full Term ends . Friday 5 December ...always aCaian FIREWORKS over Harvey Court Judging the BOOKER PRIZE Editor: Mick Le Moignan How GREEN is Your Clothing? Editorial Board: Dr Anne Lyon, Dr Jimmy Altham, Professor Wei-Yao Liang How LEVEL is Your Playing Field? Design Consultant: Tom Challis Artwork and production: Cambridge Marketing Limited Gonville & Caius College Trinity Street Cambridge CB2 1TA United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1223 339676 Email: [email protected] [email protected] www.cai.cam.ac.uk/CaiRing/ ...Always a Caian 1 From the Director of Development Welcome to the seventh issue of Once a Caian..., the magazine for all members of the Caian community. Together, Caians, parents and friends contribute, each year, over a quarter of the cost of running the College. We thank you for such outstanding loyalty and generosity, an eloquent expression of gratitude for the past and faith in the future. We are proud that Caius again featured in the annual Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign Report. Last year it recorded Contents the funding of the Stephen Hawking Building and this year’s Report recognised Derek Ingram Derek Liang Yao the 95 Caians who showed what can be achieved collectively by raising £1million to endow the Neil McKendrick College Lectureship. In Once a Caian..., we try to paint a picture of the College in the present, 2 6 12 showcasing the current achievements of Fellows and students and inviting older members to reminisce and reflect, to provide a perspective on how the community to which we all belong is evolving over the decades. In this issue we learn about the research of Dr Julian Allwood (2000), whose work is part of Cambridge’s significant and complex contribution to global challenges and the sustainable development agenda. Dr Ruth Scurr (2006) takes us behind the scenes in the literary world as she describes her role judging the 2007 Booker Prize. Dr Jimmy Altham (1965), as Chairman of the College Works Committee, Gloucestershire Echo Mick LeMoignan Mick shares the challenges of maintaining Harvey Court. Dan White We understand that our supporters have various priorities: some wish to invest in the College’s future while others would prefer their gifts to have an 24 29 32 immediate impact, benefitting students today. Accordingly, we have set up an Annual Fund, where donations will not be added to the Endowment but will be applied immediately to the College’s current needs. You can read more about this in “Caius Calling!” Julia Gilbert (1996) has kindly supplied the College with Boat Club programmes going back to 1987. I would like to add my support to the appeal in CaiNotes for earlier programmes from the Lent and May Bumps to complete the College’s records. Many will be interested to read “How Level is Your Playing Field?”, written by 2 Fireworks over Harvey Court: 3 Points of View – Professor David Kunzle (1954) Gabriel Byng (2005) and Dr Jimmy Altham (1965) Dan White caught the friendly faces of the Caius our Admissions Tutor, Dr Andrew Bell (2006), who describes how he and his Pantry team: (l to r) Vlasta Pizarro (Assistant Butler), colleagues assess candidates solely on grounds of their academic potential. 4 Judging the Booker Prize – by Dr Ruth Scurr (2005) Paolo Pace (Fellows’ Butler), Sammy Lau (Deputy 6 How Green is Your Clothing? – the work of Dr Julian Allwood (2000) Butler) and Roger Norman (Assistant Butler) They are also building a Caian community for the future, with contacts, 8 How Level is Your Playing Field? – by Dr Andrew Bell (2006), Admissions Tutor commitments, friendships and loyalties that will last a lifetime. 10 Securing the Supervision System – College Lectureships 12 Foot-the-Ball (1947) – by Douglas Rae (1945) 16 Caius Calling! – Telephone Campaign 2008 18 “Gee, I wonder if...” – interview with Dr Charles McCutchen (1952) Dan White Dr Anne Lyon (2001) 20 Thank You! – To All Our Benefactors Fellow 24 The Stephen Hawking Circle 26 CaiNotes 28 The Caius Foundation (USA) “A gift to Gonville & Caius College counts towards 29 The Caius Australian Scholarship Fund the Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign” 30 A Case of Mistaken Identity – by Hibbert Binney (1939) 32 CaiMemories 36 Two Poems by Stanley Howarth (1935) Cover Photographs by Yao Liang (Harvey Court) and Derek Ingram (Fireworks). Firework photographs by Derek Ingram. 2 Once a Caian... ...Always a Caian 3 by Dr Jimmy Altham (1965), Yao Liang Yao Chairman of the Caius Works Committee hatever judgements one may make about the aesthetic and W social qualities of Harvey Court, the building itself presents the College with a by David Kunzle (1954), number of serious difficulties which will be Professor of Art History by Gabriel Byng (2005), horrendously expensive to resolve. at UCLA 1) The building is listed as Grade II* by Current Caius Student English Heritage, so we cannot make changes evisiting Caius for the Golden arvey Court must be the most that English Heritage would perceive as Reunion of my matriculation year unfairly maligned building in compromising the integrity of the original R really set up in me a mood of fond H Cambridge. Nobody likes it, from design. nostalgia. But I made the mistake of revisiting Fellows to students, from visitors to 2) It wastes energy, with big picture- Harvey Court, which revived the despair I felt residents. But I think they’re wrong. I have windows and little insulation. on first encountering it twenty years ago. not visited, let alone lived in, better student 3) The main roof, which is made of copper, is This is worse than a nineteenth century accommodation since I left Harvey Court thought to be coming to the end of its useful prison complex, with its denial of outlook to two years ago. life. the exterior view and the lead coffin view in Even now, sitting at the stone mullioned 4) The terraces and the podium are a the centre. I imagine a gibbet standing there. window of a pretty set in St Mike’s Court, I concern. The original brick terraces were The inhumanity of the design is an insult to miss stepping out on one of the balconies replaced with concrete slabs, which have the landscape, to an otherwise beautiful that run the length of the building to see a become uneven. Cambridge with lovely buildings, old and new, friend or enjoy a stroll. Rather than be 5) There is water penetration, either because and to the poor students incarcerated there. concealed behind a closed door or at the the waterproof membrane is defective or I doubt that I have ever had so violent end of a faceless corridor, every student is because of deterioration in the brick and immediate a reaction to sheer, wilful, integrated into the Harvey Court parapets. artful ugliness, bearing the stench of a community, just a window away from most 6) The roof of the recently refurbished visionless, bureaucratized capitalist education of the year-group, but still with their own breakfast-room needs replacing. system. By the latter I mean not Caius or private space. Built at the start of the 7) The building needs complete re-wiring. Cambridge, or my own education in particular 1960s, Harvey Court seems to plan for a 8) The copper heating pipes are beginning to – far from it – but a system that seemed hopeful future based on community and spring leaks – and they are encased in designed, especially among scientists, to rationalism, using modern materials, concrete, so can only be reached with a imprison our minds. “We are not (in the UK or perpendicular lines and a tidy layout. A pneumatic drill. US) imprisoned for our ideas, because we are sense of belonging was not something extra 9) The downpipes run inside the brick piers already imprisoned by our ideas.” to the modern student’s surroundings, it and so are also inaccessible without Yao Liang Yao Yao Liang Yao Geer Harvey Court resembles a prison from the was built into them. removing the bricks to reach them. outside (whatever joys it may offer from the This open and welcoming plan 10) Lavatory and washing facilities need David Kunzle. Gabriel Byng. Dr Jimmy Altham. inside), and symbolizes for me a well- emphasises that Harvey Court is just that: a updating. internalized lock on real rebellion, which Court. Most modern student blocks are 11) The picture-windows are suffering from rofessor Stephen Hawking (1965) donation towards a Fund to Demolish Harvey Sir Leslie Martin, but Tim Mathias (1957) universities, or the students in them, seemed towering cuboids hidden behind more decay in the woodwork, with badly worn has expressed his delight with the Court and Replace it with a Humane Building! remembers seeing the first plans for it on the to offer momentarily in the 1960s, against graceful older buildings, but at Harvey runners.