The University’s much-publicised 800th anniversary this year has spawned at least two celebratory volumes. One is CUSU’s glorified graduate recruitment brochure (or doorstop, for the more practical), distributed to staff and students before Christmas; the other is this official ‘commemorative’ book, commissioned from Third Millennium Press by the University and edited by award-winning documentary-maker Peter Pagnamenta.

Chock-full of images and bursting with contributions from a veritable Who’s Who of twentieth-century Cambridge alumni, Pagnamenta’s book is entertaining, informative, and up-to-date. While it nods, with due reverence, to the past eight hundred years, it is not preoccupied with the events and traditions of the university’s past—to its credit, it is very much a portrait of the University as it exists today (even the photographs are extremely recent: look closely and you might spot yourself!).

I have read, with real curiosity, several books about the history of Cambridge, each time with the distinct feeling that I could only access the things I read about from a very great distance; even reading about the events and customs of university life over the course of the past century, I often can’t help but feel as if I’m looking through a very narrow window into a place and a pattern with which I am completely unfamiliar. However, since this book focuses primarily on the University’s modern face, it succeeds in portraying an institution and a population that any current student or other University figure will recognise immediately. Since the entity it describes is so familiar, this volume is truly a valuable souvenir of Cambridge in 2009; I am tempted (despite its high price) to purchase it and store it away so that in fifty years’ time I can enjoy immersion in a portrait of the place where I was educated.

With essays and other contributions by former students, current fellows, and everyone in between—to name a few, Peter Hall, Jonathan Miller, Jeremy Paxman, Sue Perkins, John Polkinghorne, Quentin Skinner and Simon Blackburn—this book is a thoughtful and studied attempt to conjure a sense of place at the turn of the University’s new century. And if my review seems overly laudatory, it may be because the competition is so poor; CUSU’s fiasco of a book, along with the University’s surprisingly sparse programme of events for the coming year, give this volume ample space to shine.

By Emma Mustich