Once a Caian Issue 4

ISSUE 4 MICHAELMAS 2006 GONVILLE & CAIUS COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

Computers that Read Minds!

Nerve Cells that Regenerate!

What Next from Caius Scientists?

Memories of May Week 2006

From the Director of Development Once a Caian… aims to celebrate Caius and Caian achievements and to share them with the wider Caian community throughout the world. I write this as the College celebrates 27% of its students gaining firsts in Tripos and is again placed second in the Tompkins Table. In sport, too, the triumphs of the Caius Boat Club have just won them the coveted Clock Tower, as Martin Wade (1962) relates in Nine Men with Ten Heads.

In this issue, we focus first on the work of three Fellows. The ground-breaking research of Joe Herbert (1976) in neurology may well transform the treatment available for victims of strokes, Alzheimer’s and many other diseases. Peter Robinson (1971) is venturing into a brave new world where computers will be programmed to read our moods and act accordingly. Barry Hedley (1964) clarifies the philosophy behind the changes in financial strategy that have been implemented by the College during his time as Senior Bursar. Barry has done much to ensure the success and prosperity of our College in the twentyfirst century and we wish him every happiness in his retirement. We would also welcome applications from Caians as the College looks for his successor.

We also invite you: to admire firsthand the pioneering work of Linda Tucker (1985) in restoring the rare White Lion to its rightful habitat by accepting her invitation to visit the White Lions in South Africa in May 2007; to take part in the highly original interactive game, Perplex City, the creation of three recent Caius graduates, using the puzzle cards they have generously enclosed; and to join the Caius Wine Club having reviewed the selection of two members of the College’s Wine Committee, Neil McKendrick (1958) and KJ Patel (1989).

We look back in gratitude at Edmund Gonville, an entrepreneur of genius, and a generous man who knew also how to open the purses of his friends and patrons. He was a brilliant fundraiser and I am sure would have been delighted by the way Caians and friends of the College in the twenty-first century have responded with unprecedented loyalty and generosity to our appeals for support for the College, with the result that over 600 attended this year’s May Week Party for Benefactors. The continuing regular financial support of our benefactors is a vital ingredient in underpinning the College’s success and is greatly appreciated.

Dr Anne Lyon (2001) Fellow

“A gift to Gonville & Caius College counts towards the Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign”

...Always a Caian 1

C K of FREE PA copy in every

14

Des Le Moignan

Richard Wicksteed

12

6

Dan White

4

Mick Le Moignan

Antony Barrington Brown

8

Mick Le Moignan

2

Contents

2 New Nerve Cells for Old – Professor Joe Herbert (1976) 4 Mind Reading Machines – Professor Peter Robinson (1971) 6 Minding Our Own Business – Barry Hedley (1964) 8 First Overland – The legendary journey to Singapore with photographs by Antony Barrington Brown (1951)

Fellows’ Butler, Rudi Martiniani with retired Fellows’ Butler (1966-1995) and Caius Benefactor, John Quintana at the May Week Party.

12 The Lion Queen – Linda Tucker (1985) invites all Caians to visit the White Lions in South Africa in May 2007 14 The May Week Party 2006 – 600 benefactors and guests enjoy a memorable return to Caius 16 Mind Candy – Ralph Owen (1999) 20 CaiNotes – Recent events and achievements by Caians 22 CaiMemories 26 The Caius Wine Club – All Caians and friends of the College are invited to join this exciting new venture 28 From the Archive… …To the Present 29 CaiSport – Nine Men with Ten Heads! The Caius Boat Club wins the Clock Tower – Martin Wade (1962) Cover Photos by Des Le Moignan

Yao Liang

18 Gonville but Not Forgotten – Eleanor James (2002)

2 Once a Caian...

Can we repair the damaged brain?

Mick Le Moignan

by Professor Joe Herbert (1976) Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

C

ut your finger, and in a few days it heals. More remarkably, if a surgeon removes part of your liver, the rest grows to replace the missing bit.

Both are dependent on the ability of skin and liver cells to replicate, and thus make new cells, when circumstances require it. Many tissues make new cells all the time, including the skin (which loses cells by friction etc.) and the gut, which needs a constant supply of new cells to retain its function. During life in the womb, your brain is made in the same way.

Embryonic nerve cells (neurons) divide repeatedly to make daughter and granddaughter cells, so the number of brain cells grows from a few hundred to over 10 10.

At the same time, the brain develops from a simple tube into the complicated structure we

carry in our heads. The brain actually makes more neurons than it needs.

So there’s a second process: excess neurons are selectively removed, a process that shapes the adult brain and is itself influenced by all sorts of events (eg nutrition, stress) during intra-uterine and neonatal life. As you can imagine, there is considerable interest in the factors that regulate both the supply of new neurons and the way they are selected for survival or disposal, and how these factors differ between individuals.

My lab has two major but overlapping interests. Experimentally, we study how hormones regulate the way the brain makes new neurons (a process called ‘neurogenesis’), and how this interacts with other neurochemicals such as serotonin, which is known to be concerned with depression in

humans. In collaboration with Ian Goodyer, Professor of Adolescent Psychiatry, we study risk factors for clinical depression in adolescents. A bout of depression at this time disrupts their lives, and in many cases has longstanding adverse consequences for future mental health and career prospects. Now it turns out that the two processes may be linked.

Until recently, we taught our students that you made all your neurons before birth, so you spent the rest of your life with the supply of nerve cells you obtained during the earliest months.

It took until the early 1990s for neurogenesis to be accepted as a phenomenon in the adult brain. The hippocampus, a part we know is concerned with certain sorts of memory, is one area that goes on making new Mick Le Moignan

A model of the human brain showing the location of the hippocampus (named because its shape is rather like a seahorse). Recent research has proved that the hippocampus continues to produce new nerve cells and that it does so more effficiently if the individual takes regular exercise and is sociable.

...Always a Caian 3

factors such as temperament, family history and social adversity but also higher cortisol levels predispose both adolescents and adult women to depression. Depression is about twice as common in girls as boys, and we find that girls have about 20% more cortisol in the morning than boys. We wonder if this might account for at least some of this sexdifference. Increased cortisol, as we have seen, would be expected to reduce neurogenesis.

I must be frank: there is still a long way to go before establishing a convincing link

learning, or forgetting, or selecting facts or episodes for long-term memory requires new nerve cells and, implicitly, the death of old ones. There have been attempts to show this to be true, none very convincing so far.

We really don’t know; but the fact that neurogenesis occurs opens up lots of new ideas about this part of the brain. It also suggests that the stem cells from the hippocampus that make new neurons might be useful in encouraging brain repair elsewhere. It’s an extraordinary fact that there are stem cells all Joe Herbert

neurons throughout life.

One of the striking facts about hippocampal neurogenesis is that it isn’t constant. Firstly, it declines markedly with age.

It’s been known for some time that the hippocampus shrinks in older people, and that this is associated with declining cognitive abilities. It’s also known that both processes are very variable between individuals. Increasing the levels of the stress hormone cortisol dramatically reduces neurogenesis, and this is one focus of my lab. Cortisol comes from the adrenal glands, lying, as their name suggests, just above the kidneys. Stress – particularly persistent or uncontrollable stress – increases cortisol remarkably. Stress – or injecting cortisol (or its equivalent in rats) – shuts off neurogenesis. Cortisol also increases with age (in some people) and preventing this, in rats, also reduces the age-related decline in neurogenesis. So, age and stress turn neurogenesis off; does anything turn it on?

There are some fascinating findings.

Making rats exercise (or allowing them to do so) increases the number of new cells in the hippocampus. We don’t know how this happens. Jogging may be good for your brain as well as your heart. Rats that live alone don’t benefit from exercise, suggesting that social circumstances also play a role.

A couple of years ago, it was discovered that Prozac (properly known as fluoxetine) and some other anti-depressants increased neurogenesis. This created great excitement, which still persists: is depression associated with or caused by decreased neurogenesis (excess cortisol can lead to depression), or are the therapeutic effects of drugs like Prozac dependent on the increased formation of new nerve cells? One of the puzzles about Prozac and similar drugs is that their biochemical effects on the brain occur within a few hours, but they take 3-4 weeks to act on depression.

Why so long? One explanation is that it takes about the same time (3-4 weeks) for newlyformed nerve cells to mature and make their connections with the rest of the brain.

Cortisol is normally much higher in the morning than in the evening, but this daily rhythm is lost or blunted in about half of those with depression. One of my lab’s findings is that reproducing this attenuated rhythm in rats prevents Prozac from increasing neurogenesis.

Is this why some people (about 20-30%) fail to respond to these drugs? Currently we are trying to understand how this happens at the level of the cell: does cortisol act directly on the stem cells in the hippocampus, or does it alter the production of substances acting as ‘growth factors’ that come mainly from other cells surrounding those making new neurons?

And why do these cells need to experience the daily tidal wave of cortisol?

In our clinical work, we find that not only

The dentate gyrus under the microscope. The green cells are mature neurons, the blue ones are immature (developing) neurons (note their long processes) and the yellow are dividing stem cells making new nerve cells.

between depression and neurogenesis, though since I work on both, I hope it materialises.

Now we are beginning to study how variations in some of the genes associated with either cortisol or serotonin add to overall patterns of risk for this serious illness.

What about age? As you get older, you lose brain cells. The rate of loss has various estimates, but over a lifetime it’s not negligible.

Some people lose more than others. In extreme cases, this results in various forms of dementia, of which Alzheimer’s disease is the best known and most common. The adrenals produce another hormone, called DHEA. This has some extraordinary properties. It is found only in primates (monkeys, apes, man): no-one knows why. It declines rapidly (but variably) with age (a 60 year old will have about one third the levels of a 20 year old). We have found that it increases neurogenesis, so part of the agerelated decline might be prevented by giving older people DHEA. DHEA, you will not be surprised to learn, is also an anti-depressant.

Why does the hippocampus need to make new neurons? This part of the brain is very susceptible to damage. A brief period of oxygen or sugar shortage will damage the hippocampus even if other areas survive. Some of the first signs of Alzheimer’s occur here. So it might be that we need new neurons to replace those so easily lost. Perhaps the process of

over the adult brain. Only in a few areas are these stem cells active, making new nerve cells.

If we understood what was so special about the hippocampus (and those other areas that do likewise) we might be able to encourage nerve cell production at sites where they are so badly needed – for example, after a stroke or a severe head injury.

This is also one of the interests of my lab.

We are growing hippocampal stem cells in culture and then transplanting them back into the brain. Would altering cortisol or giving drugs like Prozac improve their subsequent growth and survival?

If you get a feeling of suppressed excitement reading this, then you reflect the optimism of the neuroscientific community, faced by the awesome prospect of studying the most complex structure in the known world, and the knowledge that when it goes wrong, it devastates lives.

It has been said that: “neurologists are diagnosticians who astonish others with the superiority of their diagnostic skills and a virtually empty medicine bag” and “psychiatry is now where medicine was before germs were discovered”. It looks as if these pessimistic views may be changing.

The work of my laboratory is generously supported by the Wellcome Trust.

4 Once a Caian...

M

Mind

Reading Machines

by Mick Le Moignan (2005) Mick Le Moignan

Peter Robinson demonstrates with a young volunteer how a computer linked to a video camera can accurately read the emotions she portrays.

Mick Le Moignan

ost of us have felt angry and frustrated when a computer fails to do what we want. It’s usually our own fault, for asking it the wrong question or giving it the wrong instruction, but it’s tempting to complain (as we may occasionally grumble about our other lifetime companions): “My computer doesn’t understand me!”

What if our computers really did understand us? What if they could actually read our emotional states in the same way as our friends and families judge our moods, and react accordingly? Some will scoff and say this is science fiction gone mad, a nightmare scenario in which Big Brother will seek to intrude into every aspect of our private lives. On the other hand (the less paranoid one!), improved understanding and communication between users and computers could be hugely beneficial.

Research into this field, readers will be delighted or alarmed to know, is already well advanced. Caius Praelector and Professor of Computer Technology, Peter Robinson (1971) is at the forefront of these important developments and was recently invited to showcase his work at the prestigious Summer Science Exhibition of the Royal Society in London.

The Exhibition is a wonderful event which takes place every July. Twenty or so of the most exciting and innovative science projects in the country are invited to demonstrate their latest research to interested members of the public and groups of school students who may be thinking of applying for a science degree at university.

This year’s exhibits included Mars exploration, predicting tsunamis, sustainable energy for buses, controlling a bird flu pandemic, studying body-clocks, designing hydrogen engines, measuring the distance to the edge of the universe and seeing why mosquitoes bite some people more than others. So competition for the audience’s attention was very strong, but the idea of mind-reading computers and the ingenious way in which it was demonstrated really caught people’s imagination.

Peter Robinson has been working on the interface between people and computers for many years. He is not so much interested in creating the virtual environments of computer games and the like, where users inhabit a synthetic world, as in translating aspects of the real world into information which computers can understand: “We express our mental states, including emotions, thoughts and desires, through facial expressions, vocal nuances and gestures. We do this all the time, even when we’re interacting with machines such as computers or cars. Our mental states shape the decisions we make,

The Mind-Reading Computers stand at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition drew thousands of interested observers and participants, including Peter Robinson’s parents (far right).

...Always a Caian 5

Mental State Inference

We look at the faces of strangers and instantly assess what they are thinking or feeling. Now computers can be programmed to do the same.

A 1909 publicity card in which Florence Lawrence, a star of the silent cinema, shows the range of emotions she can portray.

Rana El Kaliouby, pictured above, drove around Cairo, lost in heavy traffic, recording her reactions for analysis.

The Kidsgrove Times

46 years on (see photo opposite) Clifford Robinson still enjoys watching his son at work!

govern how we communicate with others and affect our performance. And as ordinary human beings, we’re highly skilled at judging the mental states of other human beings, mainly by looking at them and listening to them.”

Computers, of course, cannot see or hear, but they can be linked to video cameras and microphones. The information recorded can be translated into data which the computers can absorb and utilise. Peter Robinson and his research students have pioneered the use of video input and output as part of the user interface. The task is to analyse facial expressions and other clues, so as to recognise complex emotions that may develop and change rapidly.

At first, they used professional actors to portray simple emotions and videotaped them.

Then they worked out which combination of 20 tiny facial movements and other changes at 24 “feature points” on the face expressed particular states of mind. The system allows variations in individual appearance, such as having a round or thin face, spectacles or a beard.

Peter Robinson freely acknowledges his team’s debt to the work of another Cambridge scientist, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre, who in 2004 published “The Mind-Reading DVD” which identifies facial expressions for 412 different mental states. Sufferers from autism or Asperger’s Syndrome are said to be “mind-blind”, meaning that they have difficulty in reading the emotions of others, so a computerised video camera capable of performing that function for them would be of enormous value in helping them to live a normal life.

Peter Robinson’s former research student, Rana El Kaliouby, is working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a headset version of such a device.

(Another research student, Quentin StaffordFraser (1986) invented the WebCam while working on video in the user interface. Sadly, they thought it was too obvious to patent...)

The mood-reading device may also benefit motorists. A major Japanese car manufacturer has asked Robinson to develop a dashboard camera and computer which will evaluate the emotional state of the driver and then make appropriate modifications to the behaviour of on-board equipment such as route finders.

Devices like these should be installed in vehicles within five years. So Big Brother might just turn out to be more caring than domineering, although he may still think he knows best!

There is clearly a long way to go, but commercial applications tend to speed up academic research. What if websites were able to assess the mood of their users and aim their adverts accordingly? The next time you scream abuse at your computer, it may decide this is the perfect moment to sell you some tranquillisers or a holiday!

6 Once a Caian...

120000

100000

80000

Recovery under way and new building almost complete

£10m drop – purchase Heavy spending on Cockerell Cockerell, Gonville Court Building

60000

40000

20000

0 19 88 19 89 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06

Value (£000)

Minding Our Own Business

Exhibit 1 The College Endowment 1988-2006

Year Cash/Gold

Gilts/Fixed Interest

Property

Equities

by Barry Hedley (1964)

I

College had shown only modest returns over the past decade or so, as a result of an investment policy skewed heavily towards property and bonds, as well as substantial spending on the new Library and Gonville Court.

The other three objectives I had formulated were: Revenues, Fundraising, and Costs, of which more anon… Soon after my appointment, at my first General Meeting of Fellows, a fifth objective was added: financing a new building at 5 West Road.

Once in post, then, “minding our own business” began with me concentrating on Investment. We worked with endowment consultants, Cambridge Associates, who helped us to formulate the clear objective for our Endowment of optimising the rate at which it Dan White

n 2000, just as the stock market was peaking, I rejoined the College as Senior Bursar. 61/2 years later, I am retiring from that position, although I will continue teaching in the MBA programme at the Judge Business School.

During my time as Bursar, the College has implemented a number of major changes, which I believe have put us on a sound financial track for the future. The College Endowment shows this best: by the end of June 2006 it had been grown to almost £115m from its £85m level at the stock market peak in 2000. In addition, almost £10m had been invested in the construction of the new building nearing completion at 5 West Road.

This strengthening of our finances, shown in Exhibit 1, has allowed the College to undertake a strategic review of its operations and begin cautiously to increase spending in key areas, such as partially restoring the number of Research Fellows, adding new communal facilities for undergraduates at Harvey Court and for graduates at our “satellite” court in Harvey Road – and beginning a new, unexpected and largely unwelcome ten-year programme of Health & Safety expenditure in the Old Courts (previously exempted as ancient, listed buildings).

This remarkable turnaround has required teamwork of a high order, from the entire body of Fellows as well as the College staff.

It had its roots in a curious mnemonic with which I had equipped myself in March 2000 as a candidate, when submitting with some trepidation to an inquisition by the College Council. “RFIC” – I’d fixed it in my mind by thinking of a Rugby Football Investment Club – and because of its improbability in that context, it was always easy to remember to talk about Investment returns and real spending power preservation as the first and most important objective. Here, I knew the

can sustain annual spending, while preserving its real value over time. This is not quite the same as simply maximising long-term investment return, as the need for annual extractions places particular difficulties on the Endowment in times of capital market downturn.

We were swayed from the outset by the considerable body of research showing that in the long term, returns on equities had beaten gilts, as in Exhibit 2, with property typically somewhere in between.

So why not put “everything” in equities?

The problem, of course, is volatility – so the answer is diversification. This was neatly summed up for us by David Swensen, the almost legendary endowment manager from Yale, on a visit to Caius at an early stage in our thinking: you must spread across asset classes that offer equity-like returns, but whose variation correlates with equities as little as possible. In practice, Swensen advocates a “five asset class” approach, adding tangible assets, private equity/venture capital and hedge or absolute return funds, to the more conventional equities and fixed interest. Using this approach, he has famously averaged over 17% return p.a. at Yale since he went there in 1987 – with never a down year.

We have adopted this approach at Caius and it is now pretty much fully implemented, limited only by the time it inevitably takes to build up a soundly diversified position in private equity. The progress made is illustrated in Exhibit 3. With respect to tangible assets, we were already well placed, as the College has always seen property as a good long-term diversification. In fact, property has been superb over the last few years and we have taken advantage of this to sell some properties on the margin and rebalance towards the other asset classes: we were gently buying into equities, hedge funds and private equity, for example, through the long shallow “bottom” in the market through 2001–03.

...Always a Caian 7

Exhibit 2 UK: Cumulative Wealth of Equities, Gilts & Cash (Yield reinvested)

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 4

Exhibit 5 Cumulative Total Return 2000-2005

% Allocation by Asset Class

Caius Portfolio Structure

Caius

Average University Endowment FT All Share

Real Assets

Cash & Fixed Income

Global Equities

In private equity and hedge funds, we invest in a range of managed funds, to gain diversification in terms of strategies, “vintages” (in private equity) and territories.

In these assets, there is a huge range of performance between poorly performing managers and the best. Here, we now work with Partners Capital, founded by former partners from management consultants Bain & Co. They apply the detailed analytical and implementation skills for which that firm is rightly famous, to help us make the best possible selections after much comparative due diligence.

We now have fifteen equity managers (including four tracker managers covering seven markets), five hedge fund managers (all running portfolios of sub-funds) and commitments to fourteen private equity funds. The remarkable level of diversification that results is illustrated by the “Marimekko” chart, Exhibit 4, which depicts the overall target structure of the portfolio.

Of course, the acid test of all this is how well the portfolio performs. Exhibit 5 shows that we have easily beaten equities in “down” years, but have generally done as well or better in “up” years – and we have performed significantly better than our peer group of US

Private Equity

Hedge Funds

educational endowments, frequently ranking in the top 5%.

Nor did we neglect the other objectives, which in fact interlock. Given the likely continuing pressure on the College fee, increased Revenues will depend largely on increasing third party conference and catering trade. This will receive a major impetus with the new building. We now have a professional Conference Manager, Laura Oliver, booking top quality conferences in vacations (our first new client to book was McKinsey). The building also formed the launch platform for the College in professional Fundraising, since the weakening of the Endowment in the 90’s caused by the Cockerell and Gonville Court investments made it clear that this building should be paid for by new money. This goal has been amply accomplished by a combination of over £9m raised by our Fellow Development Director, Dr Anne Lyon, appointed in 2001, and her crack team, and a further £5m raised by the sale of lodging houses that are no longer needed.

Last, but by no means least, Cost Management. There is little point in raising endowment levels and returns unless the College is also able to manage its costs effectively, so that they balance with the

sustainable spending power of the Endowment – which we calculate to be 4.5% of the average value of the endowment in the three previous years. The College established a revised structure of management committees, supported by management accounts. This enabled us first to agree a differentiated series of target cost reductions, (some important areas, such as Admissions/Access initiatives, were actually increased), and then to implement them successfully in practice, so that our spending has roughly equalled the sustainable amount in each of the last three years.

Our determination to “mind our own business” is reflected in the formal overall financial objective we have agreed: “to ensure that the College’s primary educational, research and religious functions are managed cost-effectively and supported by robust and well-managed financial resources, which will sustain the enterprise in perpetuity.”

In leaving now, I am confident that, provided the College maintains momentum with the “RFIC” objectives – sound Investment, continued Fundraising, effective Cost management and the development of conference Revenues – this tough objective will continue to be met.

8 Once a Caian...

First

by Mick Le Moignan (2005)

Overland

Antony Barrington Brown (1948) – “BB”

I

f you are planning to travel overland across half the planet, you must first have the foresight to be born in the right year. Like Alexander the Great, Marco Polo and Genghis Khan before them, the six intrepid members of the Oxford and Cambridge Overland Expedition to Singapore of 1955-56 timed their effort to perfection.

Three Caians, two Cath’s men and one unfortunate from the Other Place succeeded in traversing the notorious Stilwell Road, the only road from India through Northern Burma. A couple of years later, with the help of the monsoons, the jungle reclaimed its own and no-one has ever been able to follow in their Land Rovers’ tyre-tracks. The journey has become a legend: the BBC marked the fiftieth anniversary by showing (in colour for the first time) newly edited versions of some of the remarkable film they sent back.

If timing was one of the keys to their success, preparation was another. They persuaded the Royal Geographic Society to contribute £100 towards a study of irrigation in the Thal Desert in Pakistan and the Ford

“

The only good reason for not buying a copy for your son’s or husband’s birthday is that he will then want a Land Rover for Christmas!

”

The book “First Overland” is available at £12.99 from www.signalbooks.co.uk Telephone: +44 (0)1865 724856

Foundation to pay a similar amount towards a study of mineral resources in Burma. A young BBC producer by the name of David Attenborough was so impressed by their naïve “pitch” that he gave them £200 with which to buy a clockwork film camera and some film stock. Harraps paid an advance of £240 on the promised book. Apart from those, there was no more sponsorship in cash, but 83 companies donated supplies of camping gear, food, petrol and other equipment – and they had major support from Land Rover and Brooke Bond, whose local offices welcomed them like the celebrities they rapidly became.

It is impossible here to give anything more than a flavour of this epic journey, but happily the book, First Overland, by Tim Slessor, is available again from Signal Books of Oxford. An early reviewer from The Times Literary Supplement described it as “altogether delightful… written with humour and beguiling gusto.” Motor magazine capped that, calling it simply: “the best travel book I have ever read.” According to David Attenborough, the only good reason for not buying a copy for your son’s or husband’s

birthday is that he will then want a Land Rover for Christmas!

The Caian members of the Expedition were Antony Barrington Brown (1948), (“BB”), generous supplier of the photographs for this feature, Pat Murphy (1951), the navigator, whose skill in handling the delicate negotiations for practically unprecedented visas won him a diplomatic career with the Foreign Office, and the late Henry Nott (1951), whose driving and mechanical skills were vital in keeping the two Land Rovers on the road and in good repair. Tim Slessor and Adrian Cowell, St Catharine’s men who went on to distinguish themselves as documentary film-makers, and the sole Oxford representative, Nigel Newbery, were respectively the Expedition’s writer, business manager and quartermaster. BB points out that before the expedition they were not friends, but chosen for their abilities, to which he attributes their success.

They left London on 1 September 1955 and returned on 21 August 1956. Driving through France, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, they settled into their

...Always a Caian 9

Six itinerant British subjects in Turkey after ten months on the road: Tim Slessor, Adrian Cowell, Pat Murphy (1951), Antony Barrington Brown (1948), Henry Nott (1951) and Nigel Newbery.

At Henry’s last reunion: (left to right) Nigel, BB, Pat, Adrian, Henry and (seated) Tim

Kit for the “assault on Burma” laid out at Brooke Bond’s Julia tea estate in Assam. Henry, Adrian, Pat, “Sir Suit”, Tim, Nigel, BB

roles, practised the basic survival skills of cooking, camping and getting on with each other and had their first taste of the curiosity of the natives. They stayed a few days in Beirut, then a sort of Mediterranean Paris, both to enjoy themselves and to send off the first batch of reports to sponsors and requests for assistance and supplies further down the road. They had the benefit of a dedicated and efficient back-up team handling matters in the UK, but communications were not as easy as they are today and there was a formidable amount of paperwork to be completed at every stage of the journey.

They pressed on through the deserts of Syria, Iraq, Persia and Pakistan, often on unmade or non-existent roads. The Land Rover carrying the geographers went to the Thal, to do some important fieldwork on irrigating the desert to turn it into productive farmland. The self-styled “artistic” crew in the other vehicle drove on in search of film and photographic opportunities and journalistic “scoops”, such as the story they sold the Manchester Guardian, about a thriving factory in Lahore making bagpipes for export to Scotland. They

also filmed the magnificent, tartan-clad band of 120 pipers that was a proud part of the new Pakistan Army!

India yielded wonderful photographs, of the Sikhs’ Golden Temple at Amritsar, Jamma Masjid in Delhi, the Taj Mahal, but also BB’s trade-mark, intimate, joyful scenes of the lives of ordinary people, potters at work, children at play, glimpses of reality. Above all, in India they scored a major diplomatic coup, becoming only the second vehicle allowed to drive up the breathtaking, brand new road that was still being cut through the Himalayan foothills on its way to Kathmandu.

The dark and light blue Land Rovers were united again in Calcutta but then plunged into even more difficult terrain, the river-riddled lowlands of Bengal. Near Darjeeling, they had what BB recalls as their most dangerous moment, crossing an eighty-foot chasm on a rickety suspension bridge built for ponies.

The Stilwell Road from Ledo in Assam to Myitkyina in Burma was built at enormous cost in in 1943-4 by the US 14th Army under General Stilwell as a supply route to Chiang Kai Shek’s army in China. After the war, the

All-seeing Nepalese temple

local people abandoned it as impossible to maintain; this was where the Expedition had decided “to boldly go” where very few had gone before and scarcely a soul would follow.

In the event, to the amazement of the inhabitants of Myitkyina, they completed the crossing in three days, largely thanks to the Land Rovers’ remarkable ability to drive straight through rivers. (Hints: remove fan belt, keep foot down and be very lucky!)

There would be many more adventures before the triumphant drive into Singapore, crossing the rebel-infested Shan States with the dubious privilege of a Burmese government escort and plunging through 100 miles of jungle between Thailand and Malaysia, where the road would only be completed three years later, but by forcing the Stilwell Road they had achieved what most informed observers had assured them was impossible. It was a glorious success, which the Expedition members savour to this day.

“First Overland” by Tim Slessor, priced £12.99, is available from www.signalbooks.co.uk Telephone: +44 (0)1865 724856

10 Once a Caian...

First Overland Accident

by Antony Barrington Brown (1948)

I

n the highest traditions of Medicine for which this College is so renowned, since I was the only scientist (sic) in the team, I was appointed ‘doctor’. My training consisted of a very brief briefing at the just-built Fenners medical centre and a perusal of Health and Disease in the Tropics. From this, I learned only that diarrhoea and vomiting are the symptoms of

every ailment, separately undiagnosable without a Path. Lab. Fortunately, the mantle of Dr Caius must have fallen upon my bewildered shoulders, for despite my efforts we six travelled 32,000 miles over eleven months without a single day’s delay for sickness. Just two days for an accident. It happened like this: Once upon a time there was only one twostorey building in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and that still only half built, intended for the manager of the new sugar factory. We were on our way home. The headman let us camp in it overnight. Quite a cushy billet it seemed, with even a “bathroom” upstairs with real water out of a tap, and electric light. However, the whole place was bare jagged concrete. The stairway was composed of two dog-leg flights to the upper landing outside the washroom. No handrails of course.

After supper we went up in turn to cleanse the grime and dust after the rough drive through the Khyber Pass and onwards towards Kabul. Henry, our lead mechanic, was last up after finishing his tasks. At ten o’clock the lights suddenly went out when the power station shut down for the night. Henry finished

washing and made to descend, following the stairwell wall with his hand. Unfortunately he misremembered the layout, which side was the first descent, and stepped off into the void.

First stop the bottom step. A shriek, then silence.

The rest of us got a Tilly lamp going in the main room and rushed out to find Henry a crumpled heap, completely covered in blood.

As 'doctor' all turned to me for instant diagnosis and remedy. Having established that he wasn’t dead after all and that when laid out (no, not like that) all his limbs seemed to point in the right directions, we set about swabbing away the blood, which took some time. My prognostications were many and dire: he could have broken limbs, most likely collarbone, cracked his skull, brain damage, internal injuries – definitely well on the way out. But all we could find was a nasty abrasion on the forehead, a back comprehensively skinned, and a wound in his lower lip where his teeth had been driven through it. All that blood had come from so small a gash.

After half an hour he was beginning to come round, mumbling incoherently. Must be

...Always a Caian 11

brain damage, we feared. Get real doctor, quick!

Actually, it is quite a problem to locate a doctor, if any there be, in a strange town, in total darkness, having no word of the language, whatever it was. Pat, our linguist (competent only in Europe, though) and navigator, obviously the man for the job, was despatched into the night. We waited. And waited. At last, mirabile dictu, there reappeared Pat with a small swarthy man who could communicate with Pat in pidgin German and claimed to be a doctor – we assumed of medicine. To whom, as to a ‘true professional’ I of course deferred. The consultation went as follows: Should Henry have one of our two precious morphia shots, treasured for nine months already? The doctor thought yes, but having removed the ampoule from it’s aseptic capsule, decided not to inject. Should Henry have anything to drink? Cocoa, perhaps? Yes indeed. Some was produced. Is that too hot/warm enough? Yes, fine. Sugar? This much?

More? That’s just right. I was reluctant to offer it through Henry’s damaged lips, so I passed it to the doctor. He drank it, thanked us for our hospitality, and left.

Clockwise (from top left): Boarding the car ferry to cross the Ganges Land Rover crossing a river under its own power mid-stream with fingers crossed breakfast in the desert in Iraq massive columns of the Temple of Jupiter, Ba’albek, Lebanon bridge proving that “the bamboo bends but does not break” breath-taking views on the newly-built road to Kathmandu (two images) stuck in the Chindwin “we did very well until we got to the middle!” “possibly our most dangerous moment”, crossing a wooden suspension bridge built for ponies; another bridge almost too far through the car-wash Stilwell’s military highway, a decade on the mountain train to Darjeeling claiming priority on the shared roadway (Centre left): David and Goliath in the desert (Centre right): perfectly timed photograph of a perfectly aimed fishing net.

12 Once a Caian...

Lion Queen A The

by Mick Le Moignan (2005)

fter a first degree from Cape Town University in English and Psychology, Linda Tucker (1985) spent much of her time at Caius studying dream symbolism and symbolism in medieval texts. She never dreamed how one of the most powerful symbols in the world would become the central cause and inspiration of her life.

South Africa was going through some of the worst years of apartheid; the country teetered on the brink of civil war. When Linda completed her two-year MA course as an affiliated student, she felt powerless and stayed away.

Modelling work in Paris led to other jobs in marketing, advertising and fashion, but nothing very fulfilling.

The changing political climate in South Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela encouraged her to visit friends and family again.

The turning point came on 10 November 1991, when her open-topped Land Rover broke down at night in the middle of Timbavati (the African bushveld region neighbouring the Kruger National Park) and she was surrounded by a pride of 24 lions. To her amazement, an African woman carrying a baby on her back appeared from the darkness and walked straight through the ranks of lions, gently shooing them away from the Land Rover. This was Linda’s first meeting with Maria Khoza, a shaman known as the Lion Queen of Timbavati, and the baby on her back was her grandchild.

It was not an instant conversion: Linda returned to the comparative glamour of the advertising world and it took three years for her to digest the extraordinary event, but then she returned to Africa, found Maria Khosa and asked her to be her teacher. Maria agreed, commenting: “It’s taken you a long time to wake up!”

It was the beginning of the most enriching experience of Linda’s life, and of a learning curve that continues to this day: “I hadn't anticipated that my study of ancient symbolism would be the key to unlocking the knowledge systems of ancestral Africa. The exciting thing about symbolism is that it’s constant across ages, cultures and continents. The lion is the King of beasts whether you’re European, Egyptian, African or Chinese.”

The name Timbavati comes from “simba”

(lion) and “vati” (to come down from the heavens). This area is the ancestral home of the White Lion, a rare genetic variant of the dominant golden lion species. It was declared a sacred site by African kings, possibly as long as 400 years before South African President Paul Kruger protected it as part of the National Park that bears his name. If a white lion mates with a golden lion, the offspring are usually golden, but if two white lions mate together, they produce white cubs. According to Shangaan, Swazi and Zulu beliefs, if the white lion dies out, the whole continent of Africa will be doomed.

In most cultures where the lion is known, it stands for pride, respect, honour, justice and leadership. It is also a guardian, carved, painted and emblazoned on doors, gates and heraldic coats of arms all over the world. Now, however, the white lion is in desperate need of protection – not from other animals but from human hunters.

The white lion has been extinct in the wild in Timbavati since 1993, but they are still bred in captivity and some have been sent to zoos as far afield as Las Vegas, Tenerife, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan. There are four in Britain, in the Midlands Safari Park. This is a temporary measure that may ensure survival, but as Linda points out: “a species can only truly be said to survive if it is able to live in its own original ecosystem.”

In 2002, she founded the Global White Lion Protection Trust. (In conservation, she says, every issue is global.) The Trust’s objectives are first to return the white lions to their endemic range, thereby restoring the balance of nature, and secondly to revive the lost cultures of Africa.

The Trust runs educational programmes with schools in impoverished communities, to give children some pride in their place of origin and to help them to understand they have a valuable heritage, which they can help to protect. The White Lion is used as a motivational symbol to generate pride, selfworth, leadership and courage.

There are still, however, powerful opponents of such idealistic thinking. The South African pro-hunting lobby is well-entrenched: they argue that lion-hunting is not only a national tradition but a vital industry turning over more than 400 billion Rand a year, the loss of which would have huge commercial implications.

Linda Tucker (1985) on a recent return to Caius.

Africa’s great lion priest: Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa.

Linda meets serious-faced Aslan.

...Always a Caian 13 Richard Wicksteed

Yao Liang

Linda’s book can be ordered online from: tz@globalbookmarketing.co.uk or www.yourbooks.co.za or by telephone: +27 217 017 302.

Richard Wicksteed

Mireille Vince

Guy Oliver

Linda and her partner, lion ecologist Jason Turner, carry a white lion cub to safety.

Linda makes friends with newborn Marah.

Since their discovery in the 1970s white lions were removed from the wilds of Timbavati, and bred in captivity to be used for so-called “canned hunting”, a bizarrely cruel practice whereby rare wild animals are hand-reared and held captive specifically for trophy hunting.

Wealthy foreigners pay six-figure sums to shoot them in small enclosures and take their heads and skins home as trophies.

After a fierce debate, the ANC government announced, earlier this year, its intention to outlaw such practices and to ban trophy hunting in Game Reserves like Timbavati, which adjoin the National Parks. However, the new law has not yet come into effect, leaving the remaining captive lions in extreme danger. The Global White Lion Protection Trust hopes to negotiate the eventual release of many of them into the wild, but the breeders, who are furious about the shutting down of their lucrative industry, may not co-operate.

In 2001, the White Lion Trust rescued a white lioness named Marah from a canned hunting camp after a fierce court battle. The lioness then produced three white lion cubs, which she raised alone in a concrete cell at a zoo, while further legal wrangles continued.

At last, on Freedom Day this year, when South Africans commemorate Nelson Mandela’s long-awaited release from captivity, Marah and her three cubs were reintroduced to their endemic area, the White Lion Trust’s 600 hectare property next to the Timbavati Reserve.

To Linda Tucker’s enormous delight, Marah and her cubs settled into their new ancestral home faster than anyone could have imagined, beginning hunting the very first night and rapidly developing the skills that will ensure their survival. Further good news is the recent discovery of two other white lion cubs born in the wild nearby. After twelve years of extinction in the wild, the Global White Lion Protection Trust is doing all it can to ensure that these magnificent creatures can flourish again in their place of origin.

Richard Wicksteed

INVITATION – to join the WHITE LION EXPEDITION, May 2007 To celebrate these heart-warming successes after years of determined campaigning, Linda is inviting all Caians and friends of the College to join Caians resident in South Africa for an informal get-together at Timbavati in the first week of May 2007. An unforgettable week of activities will include visits to the white lions in the wild, the ancient gold-diggers’ route and many other bushveld areas of interest.

Comfortable, reasonably priced accommodation for up to 80 visitors is available at a Safari Lodge across the Klaserie River. The total cost, including all meals, accommodation, day outings and transport in South Africa, but excluding air travel to Johannesburg, will be approximately 10,000 Rand (£900) per person. Places will be allocated on a “first come, first served” basis.

If you would like to reserve a place or receive further details of this very special event, please contact Linda directly as soon as possible, preferably by email, at: info@whitelions.org or at: The Global White Lion Protection Trust PO Box 85040, Emmarentia 2029, SOUTH AFRICA Tel /Fax: +27 11 4822977 Website: www.whitelions.org

14 Once a Caian...

MayWeek 2006

S

ome moments in a lifetime develop an independent existence of their own and live on in the mind. For those who have moved on, there is a corner of the memory where it will always be May Week in Cambridge.

The sun shines from a blue sky on to a pandemonium of punts, a light, refreshing breeze ripples the reflections in the river of long green lawns, overhanging willows and stone bridges. The drudgery of revision and the torture of exams are both over and the results not yet known. There is music and laughter and maybe love in the warm, scented air. Your closest friends are all around you and the cherries you bought in the Market Square to share with them taste sweeter and more intense than anything you can imagine.

May Week 2006 was as wonderful and glorious as anyone could have wished, storing up memories and nostalgia for another generation of bright-eyed young Caians. Increasingly, though, these days it is not only the young who have all the fun.

More and more people are choosing May Week as the ideal time to revisit the scenes of their salad days and renew associations with their friends and their College.

The Caius May Week Party on the final Saturday of the Bumps has become a focal point of our celebrations. This year, nearly 600 Caians with friends or partners came to enjoy the occasion, setting a monumental challenge for Executive Head Chef, Tony Smith, and his team, who had the task of providing first a drinks reception on the lawns of Harvey Court, then a sumptuous buffet lunch in the marquee in Gonville Court and finally tea in the garden of the Master's Lodge.

As well as convivial reminiscing with old friends, the guests were taken on tours of the magnificent new building nearing completion at 5 West Road and our splendid College Library next to the Senate House. We were also treated to a musical recital by baritone Johnny Herford (2003) and pianist Francesca Massey (2002) in the Bateman Auditorium, a film celebrating the remarkable life and achievements of Professor Philip Grierson (1929), seventy

years a Fellow of Caius, an exhibition of paintings by Adrian Taunton (1958) in the Michaelhouse and last but not least the sterling efforts of the first and second Men’s VIIIs, recorded in full on page 29.

Addressing the guests after lunch, the Master introduced himself as “Christopher Hum (2006) – the most recent Caian of all.”

He said that in his comparatively short experience of the College, he had observed in particular “a powerful sense of loyalty and community shared by Caians of every generation.” Resident members and those much further afield combined to create “one community, interdependent and tightly knit.”

The generosity of benefactors, large and small, had made a tremendous difference to Caius in the recent past and he hoped Caians would continue to respond warmly to the College’s need to strengthen such vital areas as research, teaching, student facilities and the fabric of the great, historic buildings entrusted to us by past generations.

Lord Tugendhat (1957), the Chairman of the Development Campaign Committee, welcomed Sir Christopher to his first May Week Party and thanked him for making such a strong commitment to development so early in his tenure of office. If Caius was to maintain its current extraordinary levels of performance in many fields, academic, sporting, social, charitable and artistic, the continuing, regular financial support of its

benefactors was a vital ingredient in underpinning that success.

Lord Tugendhat also drew attention to the recent launch of the Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign and the connection between it and the College’s own fund raising efforts. The two are closely coordinated so that a gift to Caius counts towards the University’s target and will be recognized by it accordingly.

He was pleased to see that more Caian benefactors than ever before had returned to celebrate both the achievements of today’s students and their own contribution to the work of the College. The one drawback of such enthusiasm was the inevitable strain placed on staff and resources. Until this year, anyone who had made a gift in the previous four years had been invited to the Party, but it was now clear that in future years, invitations would have to be limited to benefactors who had made gifts in the previous twelve months.

Already, nearly 15% of Caians were making a regular, monthly, quarterly or annual gift to the College in accordance with their means; Lord Tugendhat hoped that many more would choose to express their gratitude and support for Caius in this very tangible and positive way. He looked forward to seeing the Old Courts crowded once again with enthusiastic Caian supporters at the May Week Party on Saturday 16 June 2007.

...Always a Caian 15

Des Le Moignan

Des Le Moignan

Des Le Moignan

Des Le Moignan

Scenes from a memorable May Week Party: Anne and Richard Lyon with Simon, Briony and Charlotte Bax, the Master with Guang Cheng Li and Elisabetta Brollow, Lord Tugendhat addressing the guests in Gonville Court, tours of the sinuous New Building and the Cockerell Library, the Second Men’s VIII celebrating their well-timed Bump opposite Caius Meadow, David Heap showing his punting prowess and the Master welcoming benefactors on the lawns of Harvey Court.

Mick Le Moignan

Des Le Moignan

Mick Le Moignan

Yao Liang

16 Once a Caian...

Mick Le Moignan

by Ralph Owen (1999)

Caians at Mind Candy (left to right): Adam Martin, Dan Hon and Paul McCormick.

T

he people of Perplex City need our help!

The Receda Cube, a powerful artefact that is the cornerstone of their civilisation, has been stolen and buried somewhere on Earth. They have asked us to find it for them and have offered a reward of £100,000.

According to Dan Hon (1998), Chief Operations Officer of Mind Candy, the company co-ordinating the search efforts on Earth, “The society of Perplex City is very different from our own: they value intelligence and creativity!” The most highly-prized skill of all is the ability to solve puzzles. In order to help them to find the missing Cube, we must develop our own abilities in this area: hence the free pack of six puzzle cards included with this issue.

With almost 40,000 registered players, mostly in Britain and the USA, and a further 200,000 or so who participate occasionally, this is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that has become very big business – and there are Caians at the heart of it.

When Mind Candy was formed in 2004, Dan and his brother Adrian, (a Trinity graduate who is Mind Candy’s Director of Play), were involved from the outset, together with CEO Michael Smith, formerly of Firebox. Dan had been interested in ARGs since 2001, when Microsoft’s The Beast enlivened Part II of his Law Tripos. This diversion later enlivened more than his studies when one of the players became his wife! While training as a solicitor, Dan started working with Microsoft on a sequel. So when the chance came to run PerplexCity, he jumped at it and soon

recruited several of his friends from Caius: Adam Martin (1998) read Computer Science, worked for IBM and then founded his own games company. He was lured away from writing a book to join Mind Candy as Chief Technology Officer.

Paul McCormick (1998) came to Caius to read Mathematics and went on to take a Ph.D. in Biostatistics. He now works as Project Manager, with responsibility for the puzzle cards.

Dave Blake (1998), another Computer Scientist, helped to develop software for PerplexCity, but has now moved on to Deutsche Bank.

PerplexCity takes its inspiration from Masquerade, the 1979 book by Kit Williams that started a treasure hunt lasting more than two years. But this venture is much more than a treasure hunt: it is a massive interactive

...Always a Caian 17

Master of the Academy, Sente Kiteway, with examples of the puzzle cards.

ING D ARE TAK L R O W E ROSS TH HISTORY.” EOPLE AC IN P F T O N U S H D REASURE THOUSAN rver BIGGEST T “TENS OF E The Obse H T E B D L U O HAT C PART IN W

Links: PerplexCity: http://www.perplexcity.com Academy: http://www.perplexcityacademy.com Mind Candy: http://www.mindcandydesign.com

fiction with characters who communicate with the players and a plot that is influenced by puzzle solving and feedback from the players. The story is not the brainchild of one person: like a TV soap opera, there is a production team of seventeen, including five writers led by Naomi Alderman, winner of this year’s Orange Award for New Writers.

PerplexCity is a virtual ‘alternative world’ which interacts with our own principally on the internet but also via occasional live stunts involving actors playing agents of Perplex City’s sinister ‘Third Power’. Hundreds of websites represent PerplexCity organisations: there is an online newspaper (advertising Perplex City companies), a record label with music available on the internet, a publishing house (which has just brought out a book written by 37 players), individual weblogs, podcasts and even an ice-cream company

which claims its product is good for the brain!

Readers looking for Cambridge parallels will be highly amused by a visit to the Perplex City Academy website.

For anyone who wants to join in, the first step is to start solving puzzle cards, which can be bought in book shops, games stores and online at £2.50 (or $4) for a pack of six. There are 256 cards with puzzles ranging in difficulty from the very easy red cards to the extremely tricky silvers. Examples of silvers include breaking a commercial-quality code and even proving one of the great unsolved problems in mathematics, the Riemann Hypothesis. Each card has a scratch pad with its own identification number: players log on, give this number and the answer to the puzzle and receive a points reward according to the degree of difficulty. The backs of the puzzle cards fit together to form a large map of

PerplexCity which may well be useful in solving the final conundrum.

High points scores are rewarded with further information and a leaderboard is maintained so that players can follow each others’ progress. The website is frequently updated so that newcomers can easily catch up with the plot, get to know the characters and join in the search for the Receda Cube.

The three Caians at Mind Candy (all of whom insist they have no idea where the Cube is hidden) expect it to be unearthed and the £100,000 prize claimed some time before Christmas. What next for PerplexCity?

Hollywood agents are looking at film and television options, there are likely to be a number of high profile merchandising spinoffs (a board game is already in the pipeline) and, of course, a new season of the game with new puzzles, plot, characters and prize money.

18 Once a Caian...

D

Gonville but not forgotten!

by Eleanor James (2002) Yao Liang

espite giving his name to the Hall which later became Gonville and Caius College, our first founder is often overlooked. We proudly call ourselves “Caians”, our highly successful student boat club has dropped the ‘G&’ to become CBC, and even the College’s official annual journal of record ignores him. ‘Caius Blue’ and ‘Caius College’ have taken over Cambridge consciousness, while Edmund Gonville barely rates a mention.

Who was this man who gave his name to the fourth oldest, third largest and second most distinguished College? We know that he was the Rector of the parish of Terrington St Clement when he was granted letters patent in 1348 to found his college of 20 scholars. The so-called ‘Cathedral of the Marshland’ was started during his tenure (although much altered in later centuries).

Edmund’s College began as the Hall of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but in common parlance was referred to as Gonville Hall. Professor Christopher Brooke (1945) speculates that Gonville was “a really remarkable character, combining in quite an exceptional way the qualities of a devout parish priest and founder of religious houses (of which the college was one) with being entrepreneur, financier, land agent and legal consultant’. He was both wealthy and influential. It was recently discovered that he was the Countess of Pembroke’s man of affairs in complicated conveyancing when her College was founded. In fact, he seems to have been a central figure in sorting out the legal problems associated with several colleges which sprang up in the middle of the fourteenth century.

We know enough of Dr Caius to draw a vivid sketch of his character. He was a busy, successful, energetic physician, his head sufficiently turned by Renaissance ways to change the spelling of his name from Keys to Caius. A firm believer in the importance of anatomy, he made sure Cambridge medics studied it at first hand by providing them with corpses to dissect. An influential doctor in the City of London, he made a fortune and then spent it on doubling the lands and endowment of our College.

Caius loved the symbolism of his Gates, where students arrived through Humility, gradually acquired Virtue and Wisdom and then left with Honour. He despaired at what he saw as the drop in standards of students’ and fellows’ behaviour during his lifetime, but gave everything he had to enhance their lives and work. Caius was irascible, combative and determined to be remembered, planning meticulously his own fine memorial in the Chapel. Beside this rumbustious Renaissance man, the adroit but self-effacing Gonville, who set our ball rolling and then slipped away, is hard to pin down.

Statue of Edmund Gonville above the Great Gate

...Always a Caian 19 front page of Varsity, the Society no longer appears on the student’s union website.

Presumably, the College’s budding debaters are now frequenting the Union instead!

A slightly more unusual manifestation of Gonville appreciation is ‘Ye Ancient Order of Gonville Loungers’, a sort of gentleman’s breakfast club which met to lounge by the Gate of Humility at one of the clock of weekdays ‘to observe how strange creatures ye Lord hath made’. This organisation inflicted a dreadfully coloured tie on its members, a combination of salmon pink, old gold and forest green. The Loungers had been adjourned since a meeting in the 1960’s when “the date for the next meeting was not agreed because the agenda item ‘Any Other Business’ was never reached”. It was, however, agreed at the reunion meeting in 2004 that the group should meet again in 40 years’ time! The Gonville Loungers present then concluded their breakfast by drinking champagne and lounging at the Gate of Humility.

A more lasting memorial to Gonville was created in the nineteenth century, when the custom was to name new streets on College land after notable members of the College.

Gonville Place and roads named after Harvey, Glisson, Lyndewode, Drosier and others are still on the map today but Caius Street is no longer to be found.

Portraits of Dr Caius abound, but the College has no picture of Gonville. His statue stands on the Great Gate with Bateman and Caius, but this springs from the imagination of a sculptor who lived five hundred years after Gonville died. A closer representation of him may possibly be the fine image of his namesaint, St Edmund, in the medieval altarpiece he is thought to have commissioned at Thornton Parva in Suffolk.

Few organisations within the College name themselves after Gonville. While the shorter to say but rather more difficult to spell Caius reaps the rewards, poor Gonville remains sadly under-commemorated. However, the Gonville Boat Club has been established for the Bufties among us to come back and represent the glorious past of College rowing. The Revd Jack McDonald (1995), David Tait (1996) and Katie Symons (2000) run the GBC, whose members hold annual dinners and days out at the Bumps to cheer on their Caius Boat Club cousins. GBC raced in the alumni regattas of 2002 and 2003 and won both times, clearly scaring the competition, since the event has not been held again!

Another exception is the Gonville Hall Debating Society, one of the oldest student societies in Cambridge, which last filed a report in The Caian 1999-2000 edition. Despite a ‘gladiatorial’ year in 1996-97 and making the

The most recent commemoration of our first founder is the Edmund Gonville Society.

Appropriately enough, in a College named after benefactors, membership is offered only to those who declare their intention to leave a legacy to the College in their wills, a tradition which reflects Gonville’s own generous legacy.

Above all, since 2003, we commemorate our first Founder by electing Gonville Fellow Benefactors in recognition of great munificence to the College. They are admitted in the College Chapel in a ceremony during the service for the Commemoration of Benefactors preceding the Commemoration Feast.

I do not wish to play down the efforts of Dr Caius to re-endow a Gonville Hall which was, by that time, ‘much reduced’, but I exhort you not to forget the efforts of the man who had the vision to lay the foundations of the institution we know and love today. Perhaps next time we Caians(!) wander into Chapel or come back for an Annual Gathering, we should spare a moment to thank both our founders, the humble Edmund Gonville as well as the honoured John Caius.

Anyone who wishes to receive GBC and CBC news is asked to email their details to Joanna Wood (jcw46@cam.ac.uk), and they will be added to the GBC mailing list.

Chris Titmus, Hamilton Kerr Institute

The Gonville Loungers reunited and still lounging in March 2004: (Back row, left to right) Sandy Roberts (1960), Charles Gallimore (1960), Andrew Kennedy (1961), David Hoskin (1960), Henry Day (1962), David Yandell (1962), Jeremy Barham (1960) and Martin Wade (1962). (Front row, left to right) Dale Hjort (1962), John Powell-Jackson (1960), David Bell (1962) (NB exemplary lounging!) and James Fiddes (1961).

Photo by David Russell (1961)

The Gonville coat of arms which now forms half of the College crest

Yao Liang

Yao Liang

Medieval Retable at Thornton Parva depicting St Edmund (detail)

David Bell’s well-worn Loungers tie, Rules card and the 1956-60 Minute Book

Mick Le Moignan

CaiNotes

20 Once a Caian...

Marlow lunchers (left to right): Brian Helliwell (1944) Jim Hirst (1955) Jack Hartford (1934) Sir Keith Stuart (1957) Roland Gauntlett (1951)

Caius Club Centenary

Marlow Lunch

Next year, the Caius Club, which was founded during the Mastership of E S Roberts, will celebrate its Centenary. John Brooks (1959) the Honorary Treasurer, hopes that members of all ages will make a special effort to come to the Annual Dinner in College on Friday 30 March 2007. As usual, the Caius Club will host their Bumps Event in Caius Meadow on the last day of the May Bumps, Saturday 16 June.

The London Branch of the Caius Club is holding a Dinner later this year, on Wednesday 1 November 2006, in the Princess Marie Louise Room at the Oxford & Cambridge Club in Pall Mall. The dress code is Black Tie and the event will begin at 7 for 7.30 with a Champagne Reception. Partners are welcome, the cost is £65 per person and numbers are limited to 55, so anyone who would like to attend is advised to contact the Chairman, David Howell Jones (1957) to reserve places as soon as possible on Tel: 020 7430 0473.

For many older Caians, it can be quite a blow when either their own or their partner’s health problems mean that it is no longer possible for them to travel back to Cambridge for Annual Gatherings and other Caius events and reunions.

Mindful of this problem, we hope to organise a number of occasional luncheon and dinner parties around the country (and later overseas) for small groups who would like to meet and get to know other Caians who live in their area. Wherever possible, a Fellow of the College or a member of the Development Office will attend, to bring the latest news from Caius.

Sir Keith Stuart (1958) and Lady Stuart

generously hosted a lunch party in May 2006, at their riverside house in Marlow, which was attended by Jack Hartford (1934), Brian Helliwell (1944), Roland Gauntlett (1951), Jim Hirst (1955) and Mick Le Moignan (2005), the College’s Deputy Director of Development. Jack and Roland were particularly pleased to make one another’s acquaintance, as they discovered they have lived in the same street for many years, without ever realising their Caius connection.

Any Caians who would like to take part in similar occasions in the future, either as hosts or guests, are warmly invited to contact Sarah Preston in the Development Office. (Tel: 01223 339676; Email: sp433@cam.ac.uk)

Hong Kong Visit The Master, Sir Christopher Hum, and the Director of Development, Dr Anne Lyon, travelled to Hong Kong to meet Caians there and to attend the April meeting of the Hong Kong Caian Lunch Club and the Far East launch of the Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign.

The Master, who was the British Ambassador to China until last December, was delighted to meet so many Caians and enjoyed sharing his knowledge and experience in this nation of incredibly rapid economic and social change.

Caians attending the Caian lunch were: Tim Bardwell (1979), Ian Holliday (1979), Wei-En Lee (1987), Andrew Lockhart (1987), Arun Nigam (1964), Stephen Roith (1976), Nick SallnowSmith (1969), Richard Wallace (1973) and Danyll Wills (1973). The Hong Kong Caian Lunch Club is organised by Nick Sallnow-Smith (1969) and anyone interested in joining should contact Nick at nrsallnowsmith@yahoo.com.

Caians in Hong Kong: (from left to right): Andrew Lockhart, Nick Sallnow-Smith, Anne Lyon, Christopher Hum, Danyll Wills, Arun Nigam, Ian Holliday.

Caians attending the 800th Campaign Launch included: Guan-Hock Chua (1983), Siew-Eng Chua (1984), Vivienne Fung (1990), Arun Nigam (1964), Nick Sallnow-Smith (1969), Tansy Tang (1988), Richard Wallace (1973) and Danyll Wills (1973).

The Master and Dr Lyon also enjoyed meeting Ian Billington (1988), Michael Humphries (1972), Raymond Leung (1986), Guang Cheng Li (1990), Weibei Li (1992), Paul Rhodes (1996), KL Wong (1990), and Lok Yim (1992).

...Always a Caian 21

The Copley Medal of the Royal Society

David Skidmore (1958) coach of the victorious Cambridge Cross-Channel Swimming Relay team, with Haukur Heimisson (2004) off Cap Gris Nez. David also distinguished himself earlier this year by winning three medals for swimming at the World Medical Games in Italy

CASE is the international Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. Its mission is to support educational institutions around the world by enhancing the effectiveness of their alumni relations, communications, marketing and fund raising teams.

Their prestigious annual Circle of Excellence awards are open to universities and colleges worldwide. This year, we are delighted to announce that Dan White has been awarded a Silver Medal in the Photographer of the Year category for the photographs he took at Caius in the Spring Term of 2005, which were published in Issue 2 of Once a Caian…

As a Pulitzer Prize winner, Dan is no stranger to receiving honours for his photography, but we would like to congratulate him on this latest recognition and thank him for generously allowing us to use his work in our College publications. We are delighted that he has accepted an invitation from the Master and Fellows to come back to continue his photographic project at Caius in the coming academic year.

Dan White

Barry Hedley (1964) writes: Fellows and guests at dinner in College on 5 June 2006 were privileged to be the first to hear that Professor Stephen Hawking (1965) had been awarded the Copley Medal – the Royal Society’s oldest and most prestigious award. The medal is given annually for outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science, and alternates between the physical sciences and the biological sciences.

The medal is of silver gilt and a gift of £5000 accompanies it. It was first awarded in 1731, and during its long history it has been awarded to such luminaries as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Jean Foucault. The Fellows’ pleasure at Stephen’s magnificent achievement was further enhanced by his gracious presentation of wine to those present!

David Skidmore

Dan White

Professor Stephen Hawking (1965)

CASE Circle of Excellence Awards

Haukur Heimisson (2004) about to take the plunge in mid-Channel

Oxford v. Cambridge Cross-Channel Swimming Relay Race

Dan White

David Skidmore (1958) writes: I am not sure how the College chooses its star undergraduate of the year, but someone who gets a First in Engineering, rows for the College and then pushes himself to the absolute limit of endurance to complete this gruelling swim for the victorious Cambridge University relay team seems to me to be worthy of some recognition.

Despite four-foot waves, wind against tide, nausea, cold and exhaustion, Haukur Heimisson (2004), whose family comes from Iceland, battled ashore at Cap Gris Nez to record an excellent official Cambridge time of 10 hours and 22 minutes for the crossing, 28 minutes faster than Oxford. To put this achievement into perspective, a Royal Marines Commando team which set out at the same time took 20 hours!

The six members of the team swim for an hour each, so every one of them had to climb a personal mountain twice. As coach to the team, I was immensely proud of all the swimmers, who were fit, determined and genuinely courageous, but I took a particular delight in seeing a Caian swimmer lead the team home so magnificently. Whatever else Haukur may do with his life, I suspect he will face few challenges quite so daunting.

CaiMemories

22 Once a Caian...

It never rains....

Leslie Harfield (1948) The reference to Wilfrid Holland (1946) in the article on Legacies in the Spring issue of Once a Caian ... by Dr Anne Lyon (2001) stirred memories of my days in the Chapel Choir while Wilf was Organ Scholar. I recall, among other things, his keen sense of humour.

One Sunday Evensong in 1950, when Wilf was overseeing the first year of his successor but still sharing the playing, a violent thunderstorm raged over East Anglia. The rain was so persistent that the drainpipes from the Chapel roof gutters could not cope with the volume of water and a build-up developed behind the top of the Chapel walls.

The Dean, Revd Eric Heaton (1945), had just pronounced the blessing and was about to leave the altar step when the water found

a weak spot in the roof and burst through into the Chapel just alongside the seat which Paddy Hadley (1938), our Precentor, was vacating. Given his “gammy” leg, Paddy moved with a speed which we would not have thought possible.

Wilf, meanwhile, had been about to improvise something by way of a concluding voluntary, but without hesitation he broke into the Hornpipe from Handel’s “Water Music” to play us out!

John Coward (1947) sent the same story, adding that one aspect of Wilfrid Holland that he particularly admired was his ability, when conducting the chorus, to bridge the gap between the music students and the others.

Stephen Taylor (1951) A recent CaiMemory recounted the marvellous story of a clash between equally overenthusiastic Caius undergraduates and Police after a Bumps supper in 1953. I well remember variations on this story spreading round College. But nine Caians may dispute the suggestion by Godfrey Ash (1950) that Caius boats failed to distinguish themselves that year.

I’m sure it was in 1953 that having made a bump on the first two nights, on the third night, despite Cox’s best efforts we joined an almighty pile up of boats on a bend in the river with a splintering crash. Cox had a full view of the disaster, and went as white as a sheet. All I could see, as stroke, was a boat from way down river approaching fast.

‘Row on, man!’ I shouted. Cox gave a look which said, ‘you’re mad!’ but we managed to push off again and got started after a fashion.

The boat behind was gaining on us fast. The next bend needed stroke side to work extra hard to avoid too much rudder, but I noticed a fountain of water gushing over the rudder which seemed to be at almost 90 degrees.

The boat behind us was now within striking distance. We gave her ten (twice) and the crowd on the towpath were shrieking encouragement, at least that’s what I THOUGHT it was!

Suddenly it was all over. We had bumped the boat ahead, and I turned round to congratulate the crew. On stroke side in the engine room, one man had been holding aloft the remaining inboard half of his oar ever since the pile up, while the other had lost three quarters of his blade!

The fourth night? Well, we rowed over in splendid isolation, but nine men still felt they had distinguished themselves!

Jeremy Kilner (1949) “The Bedders’ Tales” in the last issue reminded me that after the Lent Bumps Supper in 1952 we had a rather messy party in one of the downstairs rooms in St Michael’s Court.

As Secretary of the Boat Club, I thought it would be prudent to offer our apologies to the bedmakers, so I spoke to E K Bennett (1914),

the Senior Tutor, and asked him to convey our apologies to Miss Small, who had recently been appointed Housekeeper. He said: “My boy, don’t worry! I was speaking to Miss Small only last week, and she told me her ladies liked to be able to say to each other that their gentlemen could make more mess than your gentlemen!”

...Always a Caian 23

CaiMemories Four contributors to CaiMemories attended the Annual Gathering on 4 July 2006 and were photographed together in Gonville Court by the President, Professor Yao Liang (1963): (left to right) Jeremy Kilner (1949), Leslie Harfield (1948), Stephen Taylor (1951), and John Coward (1947).

Yao Liang

Professor Andor Gomme (1956) For me, the memoir of Lord McNair (1906) by his grandson, Dr Jimmy Altham (1965) brought back some fond memories ... I was a W.M. Tapp Fellow at Caius for three years between 1956 and 1959 and after almost half a century I still recall Lord McNair with especial warmth and pleasure – though to me he has remained “Arnold”, as the following story will explain.

I already knew from my father (exCambridge and also an academic) that it had always been the tradition among fellows of a college – indeed among academics generally – to call one another, irrespective of age difference, by surname alone. I wasn’t of course in the least fazed to be addressed as ‘Gomme’ but it took a little nerve to stop mumbling and speak to distinguished senior dons as ‘Fisher’ or ‘Wigglesworth’ or ‘Needham’. In addition to being very distinguished and very senior, ‘McNair’ was also a Lord, and I was young enough to be in awe of a title. Still, ‘McNair’ it had to be. He struck me as being not only very gentle and kindly, but also rather shy, and accepted it without a blink. However this was at a time when younger fellows – of whom there were then quite a few at Caius – preferred using one another’s Christian or forenames; and some of our elders, including Lord McNair, took to this also, at any rate towards their juniors. Now here for me was another block,

he wasn’t simply a great man and a Lord, he was Arnold. Arnold was also my father’s Christian name, and my family was not one in which children grew up addressing their parents by their first names: I thought my father was rather a great man too, and for me there was something hallowed in his name, which until this time had for me been his alone. But when Lord McNair started calling me ‘Andor’ – the odd nickname by which I have been called since before birth – I realised that it would be a real snub if I continued with ‘McNair’. I had simply to bite the bullet and address him as Arnold; when I did so, his shy smile suggested he was very pleased.

So I too am pleased that a set is named after him and pleased also to be reminded of the fine portrait by Phyllis Bliss: a speaking likeness, except that in College he wasn’t a great speaker. Unlike Peter Bauer (1934), whose photograph on page 8 of Issue 3 brought him vividly to mind again, another very kindly man (he was Peter from the start I think, though of course not a Lord until much later). One of the things that really puzzled me about this issue however is that I can’t remember the gun, despite my having had the remarkable privilege, for the last year or more of my time at Caius, of occupying the suite at the top of the Gate of Virtue.

How on earth can I have missed it?

Professor Andor Gomme unveiling a blue plaque for his grandfather in Dorset Square, Marylebone.

24 Once a Caian...

CaiMemories (continued) Keith MacDougall (1954) In our day all such trips overseas were spiced with adventure and all was relatively D.I.Y. We climbed to over 18,000 ft and collected for the Natural History Museum – discovering a new species of butterfly and naming it after Bruce Anderson. We lived among nomadic tribes and were even toasted

by Prince Pahlavi (brother of the Shah of Persia) in Coca Cola, having medals pinned on our breasts before we had scaled a single mountain!

The expedition reunion took place on 20 June 2006 – 50 years exactly from the day when two light blue jeeps pulled away from

The last issue featured a delightful article

by Jeff Alderson (1954) about his trek to the Andes. He wrote that our expedition, the Cambridge North Persian Expedition of 1956, was highly organised and sponsored, which indeed it was, up to a point. Our leader was Bill Norton, son of Colonel Norton of 1924 Everest fame. The party also included Bruce Anderson (1954) who sadly died young, after an outstanding ministry in Lancashire parishes. Others were John Harding of Trinity, a great mountaineer who is the only person to have skied the high altitude route from one end of the Pyrenees to the other, and David Cook (St John’s), a regular Army officer who was asked by the War Office to photograph all the bridges we crossed on our route to Tehran, driving two ex-WWII jeeps and trailers (painted Cambridge light blue, of course).

The last member, Julian Mustoe (Magdalene) is still at it, sailing around the world single-handed, re-tracing the route of Charles Darwin and the Beagle. As for myself, I’m afraid my business and farming careers in Norfolk seem less than adventurous. But my book “Middle Marsh” lurks somewhere in the College Library among more academic tomes.

A very light read!

Magdalene bridge on a long, journey to the land of carpets, dust-devils, mountains and charming people, sadly now much misled and confused. And so ‘For some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his Vintage rolling, Time has prest, Have drunk their cup, a round or two, before And one by one crept silently to rest.’

Keith McDougall (1954) and Bruce Anderson (1954) cook up at base camp in Northern Persia.

George Aspden (1946)

George Aspden (1946) remembers his Tutor, Stanley Dennison (1945) with great affection.

Goldberg variations. It was the first time I had heard the whole of this set of variations played on harpsichord, one of my favourite instruments: previously we had heard only selections. It was a memorable evening. Some time after I left College, I got my own LP record of this music.

Every year he took the members of his tutorial group in pairs as his guests to performances at the Arts Theatre, where I remember seeing (and hearing) Cosí fan tutte.

As it began, he passed me his own copy of the libretto in Italian, since it was one of my languages. Not only did he foster my musical and linguistic education in this way: one summer, without my asking, he got me a grant from the Okey bequest, thus enabling me to spend a complete vacation term studying in Perugia, which helped me enormously with my studies.

Time has passed; 78s and fibre needles have given way to LPs and diamond styli; tape cassettes have passed on; but I can never play my CD of Bach’s Goldberg Variations without remembering this man to whom I owe so much.

Antony Barrington Brown

round and invite us to choose, and when one evening I suggested it was his turn to choose, his answer was: “I’ve already chosen all of them!” We often tried, sometimes successfully, to get him to play the grand piano which he had in his rooms in St. Michael's Court; more often than not he used to say: “I don't get enough time to practise.” But always towards the end of the evening he would say: “And now, I think, a little Bach to finish.” There is one Friday evening I shall never forget: I arrived to find myself the only one there. It must have been shortly before exams, when everyone was furiously revising; I was feeling the need to relax after revision. Invited to choose, I asked to hear Bach’s Yao Liang

Unlike my fellow-students, George Kerpner (1946) and Don Drury (1946) I have no recollection of seeing a car hanging from King's College Chapel. Like Ken Gale (1946) I do recall the chamber pot, which was on a pinnacle of the Divinity Schools in Trinity Street where it remained for some time.

I believe those in authority shot it down with an air rifle. What I most remember is seeing a tin kettle hanging by the handle from one of the three end spikes of the lightning conductor on the tower of King's College Chapel nearest the Senate House.

This feat was made more notable by the appearance of an article in Varsity (anonymous, of course) by the author of the enterprise, explaining exactly how it was done. Apparently he had done the climb for a bet (£5, I think) which he never collected, as his friend had been too drunk to remember making it.

On a more serious note, I shall never forget my tutor, Stanley Dennison (1945). He was very musical, and on Friday evenings he kept open house for anyone in the College who wished to come and listen to his collection of classical records, providing us with liquid refreshment. He would pass his catalogue

...Always a Caian 25

CaiMemories

Caius Rugby Club with (standing extreme left) David Hindmarsh (1954) and (standing extreme right) Ronnie Thomson (1955).

Caius Rugby XV with Arthur Smith in pale blazer.

David Hindmarsh (1954) A Celebration of Arthur Smith (1954) and Ronnie Thomson (1955).

On a winter’s afternoon early in 1955, I was lying in a bath after a college rugby match listening to my portable wireless. At the same time, another Caius freshman was playing his first match for Scotland at Murrayfield against the Welsh. Scotland had already lost about fourteen games on the trot and, with only a few minutes to go, Wales were leading by two points. Arthur Smith, our fellow Caian and the Scottish right-winger, collected the ball in his own twenty five (yards, this being the 1950s) and eluded the whole of the Welsh defence scoring under the posts to give Scotland victory.

Then, in 1955, Ronnie Thomson arrived in the College. He represented the University in the 400 metres throughout his years at Caius and did not play much rugby, as I recall, except for Caius. However, he flourished as a rugby player later on for London Scottish and, in due course, was picked for Scotland on the opposite wing.

I have checked with the Scottish Football Union and have had it confirmed that they played together for Scotland on eight occasions, four of them at Murrayfield. On one of these occasions another Caian, Chris Richards (1953) (a rugby-playing Scot), after watching the match, turned up in the changing room to speak to Arthur and was amazed to find Ronnie there as well. Quite

reasonably he had not recognised him during the game.

Despite having these two very fine wingers, we did not progress beyond the semi-final of the Cuppers. The rest of us found it hard to give them the chance to make the most of their abilities.

Arthur went on to captain both Scotland and the British Lions. He died at a very young age, and I remember seeing his obituary with the caption “Possibly the greatest wing threequarter of all time.” Arthur was also a scholar, researching some aspect of the earth’s magnetic field. He had already graduated at Glasgow before coming to Caius. Despite his great success as a rugby player, he remained modest, warm and approachable.

26 Once a Caian...

Dan White

The Caius

Wine Club

05 Cô tes du Ventoux

rme Rouge 20 e Fe

B l an c Ferm e

eille La Vi

La V ieill

20 0 5 C ô t e s d u L u b e r o n

sling 2004 Peter Reiner t

ean-Marc Brocard

lis 20 0 5 J

C h ab

Lindauer Brut Sparkling Rosé

C ru

blanc de blancs Grand

Launois

pagne Cham

Merchants will make a donation to the College of 5% of their total receipts from wine sales to members, whether orders are placed remotely, by email, phone or letter, or in person at the King’s Parade shop. The enclosed order form will be accepted as proof of membership.

Prices are per bottle. Orders must be in cases of twelve bottles but cases may be split as members wish. Post and packing charges are as indicated on the order form, with orders over £250 carriage-free.

Two members of the College’s Wine Committee, Neil McKendrick (1958) and KJ Patel (1989) have kindly agreed to act as Chief Selectors, with the assistance of Brett Turner of Cambridge Wine Merchants. They are delighted to recommend the following list of eight wines and a Caius-branded Sound of Islay single malt whisky.

S aar R i e

A

ll Caians and friends of the College are cordially invited to join the Caius Wine Club. Join by returning the enclosed order form with an order for any of the currently advertised wines or Caius-branded glassware.

Members will receive regular updates by mail or email, detailing new and current wine offers. Anyone who would like to join the Club and receive updates without placing an order should apply by email, telephone or letter to the College’s suppliers, Cambridge Wine Merchants, 2 King’s Parade, Cambridge, CB2 1SJ. Tel: +44 (0) 1223 309309. Email: kings@cambridgewine.com The primary purpose of the Club is not to generate revenue for the College, but as a goodwill gesture to Caians, to offer recommended wines at advantageous prices. Cambridge Wine

...Always a Caian 27

£16.00

Launois is a small, family-owned house based in Le Mesnil, the top Grand Cru village for chardonnay.

The wine has a few years bottle age, adding some luscious toasty flavours, behind which lurk hints of ripe pear. Bone dry, calmly fizzy and outrageously under-priced.

Food combination: anything savoury in pastry, with mushrooms or melted cheese.

Lindauer Brut Sparkling Rosé

£6.99

New Zealand provides the perfect cool climate for sparkling wines and Lindauer is widely regarded as the best value New World fizz. Lively, bubbly and full of fun, loves to be taken punting on the Cam. Tastes of rhubarb. Delicious.

Food combination: smoked salmon, light curry.

Chablis 2005 Jean-Marc Brocard

£5.00

The Vielle Ferme wines come from Domaines Perrin, the famous family-owned estate, farmed organically since 1967. Their flagship wine is the top Chateauneuf-du-Pape – Chateau de Beaucastel.

This Grenache-based red has plenty of juicy raspberry fruit and lovely structure. Mont Ventoux’s relatively cool climate brings nice acidity and some lively green pepper notes. Very purple, very French and great value. Can be served lightly chilled.

Food combination: good with charcuterie, fine on its own, has the snappiness to counter fatty meat like lamb.

La Vieille Ferme Blanc 2005 Côtes du Luberon

£11.00

Ripasso Bosan 2003 Cesari

From the hills around Gaiole, near the grandest wine estates in Tuscany. A serious and seriously old-fashioned dinner wine. The smell is like an old leather suitcase, the palate all sour cherry and tomato on the vine. Tannic, dusty, astringently juicy, but complex and subtle. An outstanding wine.

Like a venerable vintage claret, made with the dining table in mind. Will develop over 2-5 years.

Food combination: best with Tuscan ingredients – tomato sauces, woody herbs, wild mushrooms, spinach/greens, walnuts, beef and lamb.

£10.50

A total contrast to the Chianti Classico, this is a super-modern, big, bold, in-your-face, all-the-bodytwice-the-fruit monster of a wine.

Noble Amarone, king of Veneto reds, is made from partially-dried grapes (the delicious local Corvina) and therefore both powerful and very pricey. Ripasso is a kind of Amarone by-product, utilising the rich raisiny leftovers to induce a second fermentation, thereby adding concentration and complexity. A “midweek” alternative to the mother-wine, and half the price.

In one word, seductive. In several: black cherry, orange peel, bitter chocolate, coffee beans, vanilla, lavender, more flavours than one wine should have.

It’s certainly full-bodied, but not over-extracted, all is in balance. There’s a good whack of tannin, and very high alcohol. Four of us evaluated the wine – four broad smiles and a silent spittoon.

Food combination: any rich dishes, also as an after-dinner drink with pecorino or parmesan.

Cut-glass Decanter (75cl.) £40.00 A high quality, uncut crystal square decanter, chosen for the timeless simplicity of its design. Engraved with the College crest and name.

Nightcap Set £20.00 A charming, elegant, small crystal decanter with two glasses, all engraved with the College crest and name.

An ideal Christmas present.

Sound Of Islay 1998 Single Islay Malt Single cask bottling, natural colour, lightly filtered.

The first thing you notice about this malt is the price – £18 is a good £10 a bottle cheaper than the distillery version. This of course is younger, but Islay malts are often more fun, if a little raw, in their youth. Not so big on the iodine and TCP, but all there in the peat, smoke and brine departments, plus a welcome apple fruitiness.

If you don’t like peaty malts, you’ll hate this.

Which Islay distillery is it from? There are seven on the island – Ardbeg, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, Bunnahabhain, Caol Ila, Lagavulin and Laphroaig – but if you can translate “Sound of Islay” (the stretch of water separating Islay from Jura) into Gaelic, you’ll have the answer.

£18.00 Brett Turner

r rne t Tu Bret

Ripasso Bosan 2003 Cesari

Strong and stylish, made from tempered glass to a design approved by the Sommeliers Association of France. Engraved with the College crest.

£5.00

White Rhone wines are a hidden treasure, littleknown outside France but loved by wine buffs around the world. The fruit is rather bruised, the style reserved, like Chablis, but with a different range of flavours. A blend of several Rhone grape varieties, dominated by Grenache Blanc, which offers a cool minerality. A little Viognier brings a touch of aniseed.

Food combination: a dinner wine rather than an aperitif, good for cooking too, especially mushrooms in white wine.

Montegiachi Chianti Classico Riserva 2001

Bordeaux Glasses (57cl.) or Champagne Flutes Set of 4 – £16.00

Yao Liang

£5.90

Made by fermenting out a 1000 litre cask to 12.5% alcohol instead of the usual 8%, then mixing in 3% of the original grape juice to restore the sugar used up in the extended fermentation. The result displays all the charm of Saar Rieslings – lime, white fruit, steely minerality, nervous acidity – but has the weight and body of a top class New World

M o n t e gi a c h i C h i a n t i Classico Riserva 2001

La Vieille Ferme Rouge 2005 Côtes du Ventoux

£9.00

M. Brocard has won many awards for his supertraditional wines. This has a lovely straw-gold colour, a strong chalky smell, snappy green-apple fruit, and plenty of the stony flavour Chablis is famous for. A benchmark wine and a great vintage.

Food combination: Chablis works with most white wine dishes, but many believe it’s best enjoyed on its own.

Saar Riesling 2004 Peter Reinert

Riesling. The tasting panel was mightily impressed.

Food combination: a great aperitif but versatile, goes with white fish, scallops, lemon chicken, handles garlic and vinaigrettes well.

Yao Liang

Champagne Launois Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru

28 Once a Caian...

From the Archives...

The Centenary History of the Caius Boat Club (1828-1928) curiously makes no mention of the College Servants Boat, but in the 1907-8 season, the “below stairs” oarsmen were victorious, while their student counterparts languished in seventh place.

...to the present

The Caius First Men’s VIII rowing over as Head of the River in the May Bumps 2006: (left to right) Becky Willis (Cox) Dave Billings (Stroke), Oli de Groot, Tom Edwards, Brian Cullen, Marco Caflisch, Ian Vigrass, Charlie Shawcross, Dom Legg (Bow).

Caius Men’s crew at Head of the Charles, Boston, USA, left to right: Ian Vigrass, Tom Gray, Marco Caflisch, Muiris Moynihan, Becky Willis, Hansjorg Hufnagel, Dom Legg, Charlie Shawcross, Will Calvert.

Hugo Mallinson

F

Brendan O’Donoghue

or once, hyperbole is unneeded; the bare facts are quite enough.

On 17 June 2006 the Caius First VIII rowed over as Head of the River for the 10th time in succession (five Lents and five Mays). The Boat Club has now won 18 headships since the Mays of 1998 and in three of the past five years has won the triple championship of the Fairbairns, Lents and Mays. For Caius oarsmen of my generation, who remember struggling in the second division, it seems almost incredible that Caius should dominate the river as it does today.

As I stood on Caius Meadow on the final day of the May Bumps, I took great pleasure in watching this fine Caius crew lead the first division. Admittedly, I was a little sad to see the “Vicky Wade” (unbeaten as the Men’s First Boat since they took the Mays headship in 2002) make way for the “Christopher Hum”.

Pride, however, was soon fully restored when the “Vicky Wade”, this time with the Second VIII on board, bumped Trinity right in front of us, thus securing their place in the first division and winning the second boat headship. Clearly she does not like following other boats!

I am often asked why Caius is in such a dominant position on the river and how we can sustain it in the future. I believe this success can be attributed to a mix of rowing talent, good equipment and strong management by the club’s officers, who have combined these resources so effectively. We have been blessed with an excellent Senior Treasurer in the Revd Jack McDonald (1995), whose unwavering commitment, support and training have been so inspiring for the crews.

Tony Baker, our boatman for 29 years before he retired in January, has also been a key figure but, in the end, it is the students themselves who deserve the highest praise. They have to be well-organised, dedicated and able to juggle the requirements of Tripos and demanding training schedules which form the platform for racing success.

Sponsorship is also important. Allen and Overy supported Caius loyally for seven years and now Linklaters have generously stepped in to fund kit, training expenses and the

Caius First Men’s VIII, Lent Bumps 2006, from Bow to Cox: Dom Legg, Will Calvert, Muiris Moynihan, Tom Gray, Hansjorg Hufnagel, Marco Caflisch, Oli de Groot, Charlie Shawcross, Becky Willis.

Nine Men with Ten Heads!

Caius Boat Club wins the Clock Tower

by Martin Wade (1962) President of Caius Boat Club

CaiSports

...Always a Caian

occasional well-deserved celebration. Their reward is to see their name and logo associated with one of the great sporting successes of Cambridge today.

Perhaps the only negative is the Boathouse – a building of noble antiquity but increasingly inadequate to provide the needs of a modern boat club. In this area, Caius is in danger of falling behind several other Colleges, who have recently invested in new, state-of-the-art facilities to encourage their young oarsmen and women. The Caius showers are very old now, the changing rooms are cramped, the gym doubles as boat storage and there is nowhere remotely comfortable to sit and analyse outings. These thoughts, perhaps surprisingly, bring me to the subject of the Clocktower!

By ancient tradition, a College winning five consecutive headships is entitled to build a Clocktower on its boathouse. Only five other Colleges have achieved this and it is a joy to see Caius join this select group of Colleges, each of which remains strong on the river as well as in Tripos. We should not be surprised to find academic strength and sporting success have run in parallel; they are not mutually exclusive, as they might have been years ago.

Bright young school leavers apply to Colleges with a reputation in academic and nonacademic fields; they are attracted to rowing, which is not available at many schools, and yet is part of the Cambridge experience. There were three firsts in the Caius Men’s First VIII this year and their predecessors also achieved highly creditable academic results.

The opportunity to build a new Clocktower has triggered plans to improve the Boathouse as a facility for students, while preserving the best of ES Roberts’ elegant Victorian building.

Several alternatives are to be put to the College Council in due course and we all hope that future Caius rowers will have the Boathouse they deserve. Doubtless, benefactors will be asked to help, but we should all be proud to support an endeavour which will help future generations to celebrate the College’s successes as we are able to do today.

EVENTS & REUNIONS FOR 2006-2007 San Francisco Reception and Concert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 15 September New York Group Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monday 18 September Annual Gathering (1963, 1964 & 1965) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Saturday 23 September 1956 Golden Reunion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monday 25 September Michaelmas Full Term begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tuesday 3 October Development Campaign Board Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tuesday 31 October Caius Club Dinner at Oxford & Cambridge Club. . . . Wednesday 1 November Commemoration of Benefactors Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sunday 19 November Commemoration Feast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sunday 19 November First Christmas Carol Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wednesday 29 November Second Christmas Carol Service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thursday 30 November Michaelmas Full Term ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 1 December Lent Full Term begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tuesday 16 January 2007 Development Campaign Board Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monday 26 February Parents’ Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thursday 15 March Parents’ Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 16 March Lent Full Term ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 16 March Telephone Campaign begins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Saturday 17 March MAs’ Dinner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 23 March Caius Club Dinner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 30 March Annual Gathering (1973 & 1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 13 April Easter Full Term begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tuesday 24 April Easter Full Term ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday 15 June May Week Party for Benefactors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Saturday 16 June Caius Club Bumps Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Saturday 16 June Caius Medical Association Meeting & Dinner . . . . . . . . Saturday 23 June Graduation Tea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thursday 28 June Annual Gathering (up to & including 1955) . . . . . . . . . . . Tuesday 3 July Admissions Open Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thursday 5 & Friday 6 July Annual Gathering (1994 & 1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Saturday 22 September

...always aCaian Editor: Mick Le Moignan Editorial Board: Dr Anne Lyon, Dr Jimmy Altham, Professor Wei-Yao Liang 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: onceacaian@cai.cam.ac.uk caimemories@cai.cam.ac.uk www.cai.cam.ac.uk/CaiRing/