Cambridge Alumni Podcast

Acclaimed author Adam Nicolson discusses his landmark book, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. One of the most amazing works of English prose ever produced, the King James Bible was not the product of one genius, but rather a group of some fifty scholars and clergymen (many from Cambridge). Nicolson examines the intriguing question of how the best-selling and arguably most influential English language book of all time could have been created by a committee of relative unknowns, and explores the politics and history surrounding its genesis.

Adam Nicolson, writer and grandson of Vita Sackville West, received the Somerset Maugham Award for his earlier work, Frontiers. Other books include Wetland? Life in the Somerset Levels, Restoration, and Sea Room. Currently, he is a columnist for the London Daily Telegraph.

The foundations of Cambridge's contribution to Bletchley Park's

extraordinary successes in WWII were laid in the First World War when

codebreaking helped both to defeat the U-Boats and bring the United

States into the War. The successes of WWII in turn made possible the

unprecedented codebreaking alliance between Britain and the US, which

still continues.

One of the alliance's early Cold War successes was to make the first

crucial breakthrough in tracking down the 'Cambridge moles', whom the

KGB considered its ablest foreign agents.

Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at

the University of Cambridge, he is also the Official Historian of MI5,

Chair of the British Intelligence Study Group and President of Corpus

Christi College, Cambridge. His most recent book is 'The Mitrokhin

Archive II: the KGB and the World' (Penguin).

Between 1937 and 1970, computers were difficult to make, difficult to

keep running and difficult to use. Since 1970, everything has become

progressively easier. Today every academic has at least one computer on

his/her desk, and the Computing Service has changed greatly as a result.

In 1937 the remit of the Mathematical Laboratory at Cambridge included

the requirement "to provide a computing service for general use, and to

be a centre for the development of computational techniques in the

University." But computers as we now know them did not exist at that

time. The EDSAC, developed by the Computing Service at Cambridge, was

the world's first stored-program computer which successfully executed

its first program in May 1949.

Dr David Hartley read Mathematics at Clare College (1956) followed by a

Diploma in Computer Science. After his PhD he was appointed University

Lecturer in 1967, and then Director of the University Computing Service

from 1970. He became Chief Executive of UKERNA in 1994, then Executive

Director of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre in 1997 and

Steward of Clare College from 2002. Now more or less retired, he has

been a Fellow of Clare since 1986, and was President of the British

Computer Society in 1999-2000.

(Image courtesy of Bletchley Park Trust.)

This is a short extract from Professor David Reynolds's lecture at the Alumni Weekend 2006.

Churchill and His War Memoirs

Using documents from the Churchill College Archives Centre, historian David Reynolds explains how Winston Churchill wrote his six volumes, The Second World War (1948-54), which still shape our understanding of the conflict.

David Reynolds, FBA is Professor of International History, a Fellow of Christ’s College and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of seven books, including In Command of History:Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (Penguin), which was

awarded the Wolfson Prize in 2004 and listed by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2005.

You can download the full audio, and watch four short extracts from The Puppet Master: How the Brain Controls the Body.

This lecture will explain the complexity of the brain and demonstrate that a key feature of skilled human motor performance is the ability of the brain to perform optimally in the presence of uncertainty.

Daniel Wolpert is Professor of Engineering for the Life Sciences at

Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. He read Medical Sciences at

Cambridge and Clinical Medicine at Oxford. After working as a medical

doctor for a year he completed a PhD in the Physiology Department at Oxford. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT before moving to the Institute of Neurology, UCL where he spent ten years. His research interests are computational and experimental approaches to human sensorimotor control.

This is a short extract from Professor Alison Richard's presentation at the Alumni Weekend 2006.

This is a short extract from The Puppet Master: How the Brain Controls the Body

This lecture will explain the complexity of the brain and demonstrate that a key feature of skilled human motor performance is the ability of the brain to perform optimally in the presence of uncertainty.

Daniel Wolpert is Professor of Engineering for the Life Sciences at

Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. He read Medical Sciences at

Cambridge and Clinical Medicine at Oxford. After working as a medical

doctor for a year he completed a PhD in the Physiology Department at Oxford. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT before moving to the Institute of Neurology, UCL where he spent ten years. His research interests are computational and experimental approaches to human sensorimotor control.

You can watch three short extracts from Professor David Reynolds's lecture at the Alumni Weekend 2006.

Churchill and His War Memoirs

Using documents from the Churchill College Archives Centre, historian David Reynolds explains how Winston Churchill wrote his six volumes, The Second World War (1948-54), which still shape our understanding of the conflict.

David Reynolds, FBA is Professor of International History, a Fellow of Christ’s College and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of seven books, including In Command of History:Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (Penguin), which was

awarded the Wolfson Prize in 2004 and listed by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2005.

How the Brain Controls the Body

This lecture will explain the complexity of the brain and demonstrate that a key feature of skilled human motor performance is the ability of the brain to perform optimally in the presence of uncertainty.

Daniel Wolpert is Professor of Engineering for the Life Sciences at

Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. He read Medical Sciences at

Cambridge and Clinical Medicine at Oxford. After working as a medical

doctor for a year he completed a PhD in the Physiology Department at Oxford. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT before moving to the Institute of Neurology, UCL where he spent ten years. His research interests are computational and experimental approaches to human sensorimotor control.

What is Freedom?

Freedom has become

perhaps the most central value in current political debate. America,

for example, promises ‘freedom to the Iraqi

people’. But what exactly is the content of this promise?

The lecture tries to clarify what is involved in invoking freedom as a

justification.

Quentin Skinner is Regius Professor

of Modern History and a Fellow of Christ’s College. His

interests lie in the intellectual history of early-modern Europe, and

he specialises in the Renaissance and in seventeenth-century political

philosophy - in particular the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, on

which he has published two books and numerous articles.