Cambridge

I got to experience a different side of England yesterday.

As most of you have gathered, Newcastle is a former industrial shipbuilding blue-collar type town (although surrounded by some of the most beautiful countryside in the UK).  So it's a bit jarring when you go to world-class metropolis London or other realms in the country that are recognizably British but a whole different universe.  This was confirmed yesterday when I partook of an invitation to present on my research at the American History seminar at Clare College, Cambridge University, home of the Mellon professorship of American history, which is currently held by a very respected scholar of modern Southern politics and race relations who used to teach at Newcastle before he was replaced by the guy who was my PhD supervisor (who himself got his PhD at Clare College, Cambridge--a bit incestuous, but that's the norm in my particular line of work).

The sun kind of messed with my photos, and I only had my iPhone, but I'll try and share. This building is what passes for the dorm for the college, and where I stayed:

If you cross the road you can enter the back way through a greenspace area called "the Backs" with amazing gardens off to the sides of the path:

Then you get to the river Cam, on which the town's name is based, and to the south:

and to the north:

and straight ahead, Clare College (with the steeple of Kings College chapel off on the right):

and through the courtyard--the seminar room is off the door to the left:

I'm a good ol' American boy, of course, and it's a shame that even a place like this has its downsides: the poshness, the surreal "bubble" of an ivory tower and the utter unreality compared to the rest of England.  But even so the history and the tradition and the beauty all make the place "feel" the way a university is supposed to feel, and its absolutely overwhelming when you get to walk through it, and play even the tiniest microscopic role in the academic life there if just for an hour or two, and all the while thinking about who else walked these grounds over the centuries. It was pretty fantastic from that vantage.