Zuleika in Peterhouse

"They did wonderful things for me in Oxford, but in retrospect I cannot help feeling that they overdid them. The art of dying for me ceased, I fear, to be an art. It degenerated into a stampede."


A delightful corner of Peterhouse, the oldest college in Cambridge, founded in 1284. Continuing our theme of lost literary history, here's a recent reprint of a 1941 satire Zuleika in Cambridge in which the aforementioned young lady arrives in our fair city to the consternation of University authorities after her fatal tour of Oxford... During the visit she attends a party here in Peterhouse but many other parts of the locale are recognisable. Written by the then Master of Pembroke (just across the road actually), this excellent novella was a hilarious tribute to Max Beerbohm who, 30 years earlier, had given us the eponymous Zuleika Dobson, a shockinly funny novel, which I'm sure many of us will have read...

Full details here of course.

Really want to know about Cambridge?

If so, grab these; local publisher Oleander Press is republishing a couple of out-of-print local titles this month, both with close ties to horror master MR James:


Tedious is a collection of spooky stories written in 1919 by the then Master of Jesus College, Arthur Gray, under the pseudonym Ingulphus and mainly set in the college and local area over the preceeding 500 years. Full details here.


And Stoneground is another collection by EG Swain who had been Chaplain of King's College. Set on the edge of the Fens, just up the road, they are very entertaining and atmospheric tales of the supranatural. Get details here.

For the climber who "seeks new sensations on the artificial erections of man."

I don't post often on here anymore but people still come by so I thought I'd let you know of a bit of a red letter day approaching:



It's taken a while but we're within a couple of weeks of unleashing the Holy Grail of night climbing. This is the first recognised literature concerning this elite sport and is the first instalment of the exclusive literary genre documenting it. There are less than 10 copies left in the world of this 109 year-old treasure, and I'm delighted to bring this stegophilic standard-bearer back to life. Amazingly I've found a contemporary review:

'...the stegophilist will find a guide-book so lucid and complete as to compare with such classics as Ball's Alpine Guide and Haskett-Smith's Climbing in the British Isles. - Full contemporary review

We've worked from Geoffrey Winthrop-Young's original copy - now held in the Wren Library at Trinity:


Many will notice that the picture used comes from Whipplesnaith. There are three editions of the Trinity guide - this one, a 2nd edition in 1930 and a final one in 1960. There was also a Roof-Climber's Guide to St John's. Each of these is being reproduced by Oleander in the near future and each sports a similar livery and Whipplesnaith pic. I think they look great - and hopefully so will you.

This reproduction contains the full text (including corrections by GW-Y) and two appendices of transcribed notes by the author; one set from 1902 and the other from 1948. Both shed amusing and informative light on the creation of the book, little known facts (the truth about Byron climbing the Wren Library for example) and details of his fellow climbers at the time. Read more about it over at Oleander; and obviously, the whole Night Climbers story is available on its blog.

You are HERE:



Frequently spotted around Cambridge: a gaggle of camera-toting tourists huddled over these kinda-cool relief maps of the city centre trying to work out how to get from where they are (in this case under Great St Mary's tower in the centre) to their favourite coffee shop. Astonishingly (the epidemically-omnipresent) Starbucks has not been ringed in dayglo-orange by the council on this map despite their best efforts in cookie-cutter-corporate-branding of the city centre. These relief maps are great reproductions though and very realistic - the most recognisable bits being King's College chapel top right and Trinity College Great Court (a la the race in Chariots of Fire, although the film actually used Eton College school) in the foreground. The only innacuracy as far as I can tell is that, unlike the actual city centre buildings, this isn't covered in pigeon s***.

Of course, the true beauty of this map is that, whilst any photoblogger can snap their city's best bits, only a really lazy one can give you the whole city centre, to scale, in one shot. Voila!

Tickets


The Arts Picturehouse bar - great place to chill and read or work - and of course, the cinema has the best independent film line-up in the area.

Madonna in the Meadow


Love this. In fact I love all Maya's stencils. This one was on the garden door at the back of the Fitzwilliam - in the meadow there; can't remember what it's called. It's been scrubbed a long time now. Here's an interview with the artist.

Herds of Wildebeest...





"She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window - or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation."
Willa Cather (1873 - 1947), The Song of the Lark

I hate to see boarded up windows; symptoms of dereliction. The ground floor of this building near the city centre is a furniture showroom but the rest is like this. What a waste - I'd live up there like a shot. You can just imagine the vibrant thrill of having the view of this resplendent city framed by these. Sadly this body isn't exactly youthful and hasn't vibrated for a while...

Sky King and the World of Tomorrow!


(A post from several years ago but I'm feeling nostaligic...)

Remember 1936? No? Well now you can - with this fantabulously lush, phat and most-wicked tricycle ever recreated. Walking past King Street Cycles (a great independent store) yesterday I had to stop and stare. Iconic design cues down to the last detail. Even I know we've had a retro-bike fad for a couple of years now - exemplified by such uber-rad machines such as the Schwinn Sting-Ray - but I had no idea trendy toddlers could live the cool-cat dream on a rockin' repro '36 Sky King. It's almost worth begging/borrowing/stealing a child just to have a reason to buy it... Almost.

No Peeking...



One of my favourite streets in the city, Orchard Street is one of several in the my area that have either botanical or biblical names such as Elm Street, Adam and Eve Street, Eden Street and Paradise Street. This is because they are all in an area that used to be the Garden of Eden allotments - small vegetable gardens and orchards grown by locals. This particular street is one of the prettiest in Cambridge in my opinion. The cottages here originally housed the servants of a very large house - the garden wall of which was directly opposite their front doors. You'll notice they have no upstairs windows at the front (there are two tiny rooms in each roof!) this was so the occupants could not look into the garden and see the gentlemen and ladies taking tea or enjoying an arboreal ambulation... Given the prices these places go for, even in a recession, you'd have to be a chambermaid of means to live here now...

Like Buses...




... there's never any when you need one and then 53 turn up at once. A Cambridge phenomenon - a nautical taxi rank. These are at the main Scudamores boatyard of an early evening when most tourists have gone to their hotels leaving the punts ready for the morrow's trips. But as you can see here, there are plenty of takers for part II of the punting day - the romantic journey on the sleek, sun-kissed Cam through the water meadows over to Grantchester followed by the moonlit return. It's a trip that's bound to kindle / re-kindle the flame of ardour. Mind you, memory fades over time. And it's been a long time...