Reflections on the past year by master, Roger Mosey.
The installation ceremony for my successor Suzanne Raine will feature a woman master being ushered into office by a woman bishop, Sarah Mullally of London, assisted by our dean of chapel Arabella Milbank Robinson. The election process was overseen by Selwyn’s vice-master Janet O’Sullivan. This would have come as a surprise to the college’s founders. When we talk about the college’s traditional values, it is hard to square the exclusions of our foundation – women, and anyone who wasn’t a member of the Church of England – with its spirit today. As John Morrill writes in this magazine, even Catholics faced barriers within living memory; and women have only been members for about a third of the college’s existence. And yet… We know that Kathleen Lyttelton, the wife of the first master, was an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage; and early masters, including Arthur Lyttelton, were too. Kathleen was also a pioneer of women’s trade unionism and was the first editor to commission Virginia Woolf. If you have been back to the college in recent years, you may have spotted that the former Tower Room was renamed as the Kathleen Lyttelton room to celebrate her many achievements – and it is, we should note, somewhat bigger than the Arthur Lyttelton room on the other side of the court. I like to think that the Lytteltons would heartily approve of the college we have become.
When people ask me what a master does, I sometimes say “I go to dinners”. There are a few other elements of the job too, of course, but dinners fill the diary year-round. There are the set pieces of matriculation, graduation, admission of scholars; then the regular High Tables and formal halls; an array of reunions; the more informal freshers’ suppers; and a multitude of invitations to other colleges and to university events. They have all been enjoyable, and I have learned to manage the potentially-horrific calorie consequences: go easy on puddings, and keep the alcohol intake low. (Unless it really has been one of those days…) Inevitably, heads of house become familiar with the quirks of catering across Cambridge. There is one college where the chef likes meat to be so rare that you can expect to see the main course gambolling round the court during the starter. Another likes challenging menus, so guests were served an eel starter and a rabbit and offal main course – though that was beaten by a jugged hare offered at another grand college. I am firmly of the view that some traditional dishes have disappeared for a good reason. I aim still to be attending Cambridge dinners for a few years yet, but I hope it doesn’t sound ungrateful to say that the idea of some suppers in the kitchen at home is alluring.
We’re used to the national dialogue being about ‘broken Britain’ and, as an optimist, I think that’s sometimes overdone and the potential for our future remains huge. But one of the things that has become unquestionably worse in my time in Cambridge is the traffic. It is often quicker to walk from the station to Selwyn in the teatime rush hour than to rely on a cab. The new hazard is the council’s traffic management system near the Catholic Church, which turns Hills Road and Lensfield Road into car parks. Buses can’t move, either. Every so often, a local politician suggests the answer is light rail and some tunnelling – and that must surely be right if the city is to expand in the way the government wants. But nothing has happened, and Cambridge’s multiple layers of local administration seem incapable of getting moving.
The photo on this page shows one of the perks of the jobs and the benefits of celebratory dinners. How can you not love a college where the ranks of amazing alumni include Hugh Laurie and Tom Hollander, both honorary fellows of Selwyn? My suggested caption is “two stars and an old master”, which in my case is about age and title rather than capability. But I must learn from them how to take a bow and leave the stage.
