Newnham College, Cambridge University The Principal and Fellows of Newnham College
PEGGY GLADSTONE arrived at Newnham College to study Sanskrit in autumn 1921. That women such as her were still not entirely welcome at Cambridge, she recalled, was made apparent only weeks later, when, in October, a mob of male undergraduates tried to break down the college gates using a handcart for a battering ram. Later that term, scared by the flash of a torch outside her ground-floor room, Peggy made a frantic dash to the topmost room of the Pfeiffer Tower, where a fellow student calmed her nerves: ‘When she let me in I exclaimed that we were invaded, that we should all be raped, murdered, etc... She produced the standard Newnham hospitality which was cocoa and biscuits...and said: “If he gets up here I will offer him some cocoa.”’
That cup of cocoa is a nice analogy for Newnham’s buildings, which are warm, friendly and cheerful to behold. Mark Girouard rated them among ‘the most convincing and delightful examples of the “Queen Anne” style in existence’ (COUNTRY LIFE, December 16, 1971). They were also some of the earliest, making the designs for them by Basil Champneys (1842–1935) as groundbreaking as the female students for whom they were created. From the safety of Newnham’s architectural embrace, generations of women broke down educational boundaries, among them Peggy Gladstone, who went on to become the first Cambridge woman to take first-class honours in both parts of the Oriental languages tripos.
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Denne historien er fra April 28, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
