Cambridge: the right brain of Oxbridge, the composite capital city of
Clever. For eight centuries, this quiet English seat of learning has
been one half of history's longest-running academic arms race. When it
comes to stockpiling Nobel Prizes, only that Ivy League newcomer,
Harvard, has more.
This is the mater of all alma maters, with the kind of A-list alumni -
Newton, Cromwell, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Darwin and Hawking - so famous
they don't even need first names. This is the city where Wittgenstein
split hairs and where Rutherford split the atom; where Watson and Crick
discovered the DNA that shapes the human body, and where generations of
students push those bodies to their limits.
But behind the picture-postcard image of punts, Pimms and polymaths, is
another Cambridge: the working East Anglian fenland community that gave
us Pink Floyd, Association Football, the Society for Psychical Research,
the Cambridge Folk Festival, the Reality Checkpoint - and the graffiti
protestor who sprayed his messages in Latin...
Poet and psychogeographer Grahame Davies explores both Cambridges: the
world city and the workplace, the glamorous and the gritty; the famous
and the forgotten. He discovers there's always more to discover about
this extraordinary city - no matter how clever you are.
