Image: Third Court on a wet January morning. Photo: P. Everest

Welcome to the Winter 2023/2024 E-Newsletter 

Image: Interior of the college chapel. Photo: P. Everest

Greetings from the Development & Alumni Relations Office 

Letter from the May Ball Committee

Dear Alumni,

Happy New Year from the Christ’s College May Ball 2024 Committee!

We are incredibly excited to announce that Christ’s College May Ball will be taking place on Tuesday 18^th June! The Committee has an unforgettable night planned with great entertainment, food, and drinks, and would love for alumni to attend.

Ticket release for alumni is 5:00pm on Monday 5^th February and tickets can be purchased on the May Ball website. Standard tickets for alumni will cost £195.

There will also be the option to purchase a ticket to our pre-ball dinner, at an additional £50, or purchase a queue jump at £20. The dinner is a wonderful opportunity to sit down and have a delectable meal in the beautifully decorated Formal Hall, before enjoying the festivities of the ball.

Access is incredibly important to us. As such, dining ticket prices have been set to contribute towards the expansion of our access scheme for students on Cambridge bursaries, to ensure greater inclusivity in what is a highly anticipated part of life at Cambridge.

We are incredibly grateful for the support that alumni have given Christ’s College May Ball in the past. As a token of our gratitude, we wanted to provide our alumni with an exclusive giveaway. Christ’s College May Ball is kindly sponsored by Gin d’Azur. In collaboration with Gin d’Azur, we will be giving away a gift hamper with a bottle of their award-winning gin. Anyone who purchases an alumni dining ticket will be automatically entered into the giveaway!

Please make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date with our announcements. We will be revealing our top-secret theme on Wednesday 31^st January!  You can also check for updates on our website.

We hope to see you on the 18^th of June for a memorable night!

Best wishes,

The Christ’s May Ball 2024 Committee

Image: Christ's May Ball 2024 graphic.

Christmas with Christ's

In early December, 150 alumni, guests, fellows, staff, and students came together to enjoy a new winter event in the spectacular setting of Temple Church in the Inns of Court. We are delighted to report that this event was supported wholeheartedly by alumni, having hit capacity before the closing date. The event was attended by a wide spread of our community, with matriculation years ranging from 1957 to 2023!

Innkeeping with the season, attendees were treated to a joyous Christmas service, complete with carols, readings, and sonorous organ music from Davon Halim (m. 2021). Milton, Betjeman, and Pepys pieces were read ably by our alumni and The Master. Under the direction of Professor David Rowland, the choir sang works both classic and contemporary, and led the audience in singing well-known carols. Special thanks much go to the choir alumni who swelled the ranks for some pieces, and who thoroughly enjoyed singing under David's direction once more.

Following the service, attendees enjoyed drinks and canapés in the church. 

As Paul mentioned in the introduction to the newsletter, this event coincided with his first week at Christ’s. Fortunately for us, Paul is a skilled photographer and took some great pictures.

Images: Assorted pictures of the flagship Christmas with Christ's event. To see more pictures on our Flickr page, click here. Photo: P. Everest

We are glad to share a video of the event with alumni. Please be aware that this is an unlisted video, only accessable to those with the YouTube video link. 

We have been grateful to receive such positive feedback from those who attended the event. We welcome all alumni to share their opinions on the types of events that they have interest in. If you would like to share your opinions, please email us at alumni@christs.cam.ac.uk.

2023 Magazine 

After a delay, the 2023 edition of the college magazine was issued early last month. We appreciate the patience of our alumni and hope that those who have received a physical magazine have enjoyed reading it. If you did not receive a copy of the magazine and would like one, or you would like to request a change in your postal preferences, please contact the Development Office.

Image: Front cover of the 2023 magazine.

If you would like to download a copy of the 2023 Magazine, please click here.

An online electronic version of the 2023 Magazine is available here.

NB: Please be aware that you will be required to sign in to your account to view the magazine online.

A Christ’s Magazine Centennial Review

The publication of the 2023 Magazine offers an opportunity to reflect on the reflect on the state of the college one-hundred years ago and, coincidentally, 1923 saw the publication of the one-hundredth issue of the college magazine.

The college magazine, first published in 1886, was published once a term in inexpensive pamphlet form. In many ways, the magazine has remained unchanged: club and society reports outlined victories and losses; Fellows’ prizes and recognitions were reported; the editor compiled general college news, obituary notices, and the happenings of “old Christ’s Men”.

Image: Front cover of a bound copy of the 1923 college magazines held by the library (C. 1. 32).

In other ways, the content of the magazine has changed significantly to reflect the wider interests of the alumni community. The three issues of the 1923 magazine each contain many pages of prose and poetry written by college members, the subjects of which often bore no relation to the college itself. The May Term issue included a four-page essay titled Against Birthdays, which begins with the line:

“I attack birthdays not because there is any vice essentially inherent in having a birthday […] but because of the dangerous mass of irrelevance, snobbery and superstitious nincompoopery with which a decadent age has invested their celebration.”

Image: The first page of the 100^th issue editorial. To view a .pdf of 1923 magazine extracts, please click here.

Clearly, the magazine has transformed over its 138-year lifespan into a publication more focused on the yearly news of the college and its alumni. One-hundred years ago, an annual subscription to the magazine would have cost 3s. 0d. (c. £5.15 as of 2023) and circulation figures were in the hundreds. Today, a physical magazine is sent, free of charge, to over seven-thousand people and many more alumni enjoy it virtually. Each issue remains a time capsule of college affairs and a unique resource for college historians.

Thanks must go to the College Library, who hold a complete run of the college magazine and many heavy boxes of duplicates (to which the newsletter editor can attest).

Christ's in the News

Recent renovations in First Court have revealed a set of three Tudor wall paintings in the loft space of the Old Library which have been hidden for almost three-hundred years.

The paintings, measuring about 20ft, depict royal badges and symbols of the Beaufort family: a portcullis; a Lancastrian rose; and a fleur-de-lis. Wall paintings were a common feature of Tudor artwork but were seldom preserved when artistic fashions changed. These paintings are uniquely well preserved, due to having been hidden for nearly three centuries. Likewise, it is very rare to have a complete series of paintings. University art historian and Tudor specialist, Dr Christina Faraday, has called this “such an exciting discovery”.

Image: The loft of the Old Library amidst roof renovation works. Photo: Tobit Curteis Associates LLP

Also exciting for the college is that this story has been featured by several national news outlets, including the BBC, the Independent, and the Standard.

If you would like to read more about the wall paintings, please see the article on our website.

Images: Closer pictures of the Tudor wall paintings. Photo: Tobit Curteis Associates LLP

Fellows recognised for world-leading scholarship

Two Christ’s Fellows have been recognised for contributions to their respective fields.

Professor Caroline Vout has been awarded the London Hellenic Prize for her book Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body. The award was presented to Professor Vout by Greek Ambassador to the UK Yannis Tsaousis at a ceremony held in the Hellenic Centre, in London. The prize, started in 1996, recognises original English language works related to ancient or modern Hellenic civilization, culture, history, or literature.

Professor Vout’s book looks beyond flawless marble statues to explore views of Greek and Roman bodies as they were: imperfect, diverse, and sometimes gruesome. She raises questions that the Greeks and Romans asked about their own bodies – What distinguishes us from the gods and the animals? Where do our bodies come from? Where do our bodies go after we die?

Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body

You can listen to Professor Vout talk about Venus, Hermaphroditus, and classical bodies in art on the Great Women Artists Podcast.

Images: Professor Vout (left) and Professor Marteau (right).

Professor Dame Theresa Marteau, Honorary Fellow of the college, has been listed as one of the world’s best female scientists in Research.com’s Best Female Scientists in the World 2023 rankings, based on analysis of more than 166,000 profiles. Positions in the ranking were determined by a scientists ‘H-index’, the rate of publications made in a given area of research, in combination with awards and recognitions.

Professor Marteau’s research focuses on the development of interventions to change human behaviour, principally in relation to the consumption of food, tobacco, and alcohol. Her work for Department of Public Health and Primary Care aims to improve overall population health and reduce health inequalities. One of her recent studies showed that removing the largest glass of wine from a pub’s menu reduced the overall volume of wine sold by 7.6%. For more information about this study, please click here.

To see which other Cambridge academics were listed in the Best Female Scientists in the World rankings, please click here.

College Gardens

The college gardeners have been keeping busy this winter. They have just finished the final stage of a compost production process that takes three years. The resulting potting mix, used in potted plants and garden beds, is more environmentally friendly and nutrient-rich than other commercially available composts.

The makeup of the compost is a well-kept secret. It is comprised of various green wastes from the Fellows’ Garden, including leaves and green wood, and the refuse from students’ green bins. It is used to return nutrients to the soil and to suppress weeds.

Images: Gardeners working on the college compost. Photo: P. Everest

The production process requires the gardeners move the compost by hand in to three separate bays over three years, where the mixture is temperature and moisture controlled. Despite the cold outside, the compost was steaming, with internal temperatures measuring 50°C (122°F).

The compost is used throughout the college and is one of the reasons for richness and vibrancy of the plant life in the Fellows’ Garden. Other colleges usually purchase compost; Christ’s gardeners, once again, have gone above and beyond in their duties and our grounds most definitely show the fruits of their labour.