New Dinky Door on Green Street

A new Dinky Door – the tiny door art installations which can be found across Cambridge city centre – has been placed by the Open Air shop on Green Street.

The artwork, which was revealed on Monday (26/10), is of a space rocket with an open door, also featuring an armchair, cat, and ship’s wheel.

Cryptic clues as to the door’s location were released on Twitter by the anonymous artist who has created more than ten Dinky Doors across Cambridge as part of an environmental awareness movement.

The artist also thanked Gonville and Caius College for its support in launching the artwork.

Single-use plastics banned on Cambridge City Council land

Single-use plastics have been banned from events hosted on Cambridge City Council land following a motion from Councillor Katie Porrer last Thursday.

The motion was introduced following Councillor Porrer’s “horrified” reaction to the amount of single-use plastic thrown away, especially cups, following an event she attended on council land.

“There were no separate rubbish collections signed, no apparent separation of waste streams as food was being collected in the same bags as everything else, and nothing to remind people that they could use their own cups,” she said.

The motion has also called for clear signposting of recycling facilities at events on council land or, if none are available, a clear confirmation that organisers will make an effort to ensure single-use plastic at events is recycled.

Councillor Alex Collis, the executive councillor for open spaces, added:

“I think we are all aware of the dangers and issues of plastic pollution. There’s a lot of will to tackle this issue. You might ask what can one city, or a small-ish district council like ours, do to counteract change on such a catastrophic scale.

“There’s actually quite a lot that we can do. It is a big global issue, but small changes can be positive too.”

Cambridge history professor wins British Academy Book Prize

Cambridge professor of World History Sujit Sivasundaram has won the ninth British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding with his book Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire.

Sivasundaram, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, will receive £25,000 for the book focused on life for people indigenous to the Pacific and Indian Oceans during the British Empire’s expansion.

The chair of the judging committee, Professor Patrick Wright, Emeritus Professor of Literature and History at King’s College London, said: “Waves Across the South is a riot of ingenuity, a truly powerful and new history of revolutions and empires, re-imagined through the environmental lens of the sea.

“The jury was spellbound by Sivasundaram’s skill in combining compelling story-telling with meticulous research. Even as a work of world history it speaks directly to the politics and military interventions of today.”

Professor Julia Black, president of the British Academy, described the book as an “extraordinary work”.

Emmanuel College alumnus writes radio sitcom

Kat Sommers, an alumnus of Emmanuel College who graduated in 2002, is currently the writer for Radio 4 sitcom Charlotte and Lillian, which has its third series airing at the moment.

Sommers commented that “if the English tripos teaches you anything, it’s that tragedy lurks beneath every comedic surface. You just have to find it. Take a caricature, and turn it back into a person.”

In a blog post for Emmanuel, Sommers spoke of the process of creating the character Lillian, an elderly lady, who she describes as “a person, and not a caricature.”

Sommers added: “At Emma, I had the good fortune to have Robert Douglas-Fairhurst as my Director of Studies, who taught me how to drill down through the layers of meaning behind a sentence, sometimes even a single word, until I found the thing that resonated.”