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Explore a selection of publications by alumni and academics, and books with a link to the University or Cambridge

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The Scrivener

The Scrivener

Robin Blake

The Scrivener presents a third mystery to be solved by 18th century coroner of Preston, Titus Cragg, and his friend Dr Luke Fidelis, following their previous adventures in A Dark Anatomy (2011) and Dark Waters (2012). The ingenuity of the investigators is taxed to the limit as a goldsmith's body is found in a locked room, the town's investments in the Guinea Trade go missing, and the hunt is on for a buried Civil War treasure. "Truth, Sir, that is what counts: more than punishment, more even than retribution.

Hitler's Philosophers

Hitler's Philosophers

Yvonne Sherratt

Hitler saw himself as a 'philosopher-leader', and astonishingly gained the support of many intellectuals of his time. In this compelling book, Yvonne Sherratt explores Hitler's relationship with philosophers - those who supported his rise to power and those whose lives were wrecked by his regime.

Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration

Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration: Educating white working-class boys

Garth Stahl

In recent years there has been growing concern over the pervasive disparities in academic achievement that are highly influenced by ethnicity, class and gender. Specifically, within the neoliberal policy rhetoric, there has been concern over underachievement of working-class young males, specifically white working-class boys. The historic persistence of this pattern, and the ominous implication of these trends on the long-term life chances of white working-class boys, has led to a growing chorus that something must be done to intervene.

The Desert: Lands of Lost Borders

The Desert: Lands of Lost Borders

Michael Welland (Selwyn 1965)

Lands of extremes, contrasts, metaphor and myth, deserts cover nearly a third of our planet's land area and are home to more than half a billion people. The desert as an idea has long captured the Western imagination, but too often in ways that fail to grasp the true scope and diversity of these spaces and the realities of the lives of people for whom arid lands are home. For the outsider, stories of the desert are about the exotic, about adventures into hostile territory. Few of us consider the perspectives of those who make their livelihoods in the desert each day.

Attention Cooperation Purpose

Attention, Cooperation, Purpose: An Approach to Working in Groups Using Insights from Wilfred Bion

Robert French (St Catharine's, 1967), Peter Simpson

This book describes an approach based on attention that can help individuals and groups to cooperate more effectively. It presents the first book-length reassessment of Wilfred Bion’s ideas on groups. Every group has a purpose or purposes - or, as Bion put it, “every group, however casual, meets to ‘do’ something.” The approach described here shows how individual group members’ use of attention – both broad or “evenly suspended” and focused – can promote a better understanding of purpose, making it possible for them to do what they have met to do.

Eye of the Beholder

Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni Van

Laura J. Snyder

The remarkable story of how an artist and a scientist in seventeenth-century Holland transformed the way we see the world.

On a summer day in 1674, in the small Dutch city of Delft, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek—a cloth salesman, local bureaucrat, and self-taught natural philosopher—gazed through a tiny lens set into a brass holder and discovered a never-before imagined world of microscopic life. At the same time, in a nearby attic, the painter Johannes Vermeer was using another optical device, a camera obscura, to experiment with light and create the most luminous pictures ever beheld.

Grim

Grim

Kate Newmann

A profound realisation of suffering unequalled in Irish poetry. This volume of emotionally courageous poems is destined to find an enduring place in the canon of Holocaust literature. To read these poems is to taste sorrow. Cathal O'Searcaigh

Susan Sontag has delineated the pornography of fascism; these poems chart its lunacy, its aberrant, horrific, distortions of reason. Paula Meehan, Ireland Professor of Poetry

Reinventing Development

Reinventing Development: Aid Reform and Technologies of Governance in Ghana

Lord Mawuko-Yevugah (Downing, 2003)

Global development actors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund claim that the shift to the poverty reduction strategy framework and emphasis on local participation address the social cost of earlier adjustment programs and help put aid-receiving countries back in control of their own development agenda.

Quantum Poetics

Quantum Poetics

Gwyneth Lewis (Girton, 1978)

In this innovative series of public lectures at Newcastle University, leading contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. The lectures are then published in book form by Bloodaxe, giving readers everywhere the opportunity to learn what the poets themselves think about their own subject.

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Gold Medal Flapjack, Silver Medal Life

Alison Mowbray (Caius 1993)

"Being an Olympian was not my first choice of career, or even my second."

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The Invisible History of the Human Race

Christine Kenneally (Trinity 1992)

We are doomed to repeat history if we fail to learn from it, but how are we affected by the forces that are invisible to us?

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Translation and its Regulation in Cancer Biology and Medicine

Armen Parsyan (Clare Hall 2003), editor

This book, for the first time, comprehensively assembles and analyzes a large body of information on the role of the fundamental mechanism of the protein biosynthesis pathway, translation, in cancer biology. It systematically explores the function of the translation machinery and its regulation, including cell signaling, in the development, maintenance and progression of human cancer.

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The Pauline Conversion

Anthony Camber (Downing 1988)

With echoes of Tom Sharpe and PG Wodehouse, The Pauline Conversion weaves drama, politics, satire, social justice, mystery and humour in a touching tale of reinvention, trust — and family.

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Churchill's Final Farewell

Rodney Croft (Selwyn 1962)

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill.  Using archival material and interviews with members of the Churchill family, the book explores all aspects of both the state and private funerals held in January, 1965.

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The Final Whistle: The Great War in Fifteen Players

Stephen Cooper (Trinity 1977)

Winner Rugby Book of Year: Times British Sports Book Awards 2013

With Foreword by Bill Beaumont CBE DL Chairman RFU

This is the story of fifteen men killed in the Great War. All played rugby for one London club; none lived to hear the final whistle.

Rugby brought them together; rugby led the rush to war. They came from Britain and Empire to fight in every theatre and service, among them a poet, playwright and perfumer.  Some were decorated and died heroically; others fought and fell quietly. Together their stories paint a portrait in miniature of the entire War.

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Tolerance of Uncertainty

John Bancroft (Caius 1954)

Is God really knowable? Does uncertainty harm or benefit science? Can we be certain about our moral principles, and how can historical examples guide our perspective? These are several questions that Dr. John Bancroft tackles in his new book, Tolerance of Uncertainty.

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Israel, Church and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew

Matthias Konradt, eds Wayne Coppins (Fitzwilliam 2002) and Simon Gathercole (Faculty of Divinity)

Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew addresses one of the central theological problems of Matthew’s Gospel: what are the relationships between Israel and the Church and between the mission to Israel and the mission to the Gentiles? To answer these questions, Matthias Konradt traces the surprising transition from the Israel-centered words and deeds of Jesus (and his disciples) before Easter to the universal mission of Jesus’ earliest followers after his resurrection.

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The Unravelling (Kindle exclusive)

Paul Vlitos (St Edmunds 2001)

Combining crisp observational humour with a compelling mystery-driven plot, The Unravelling is a contemporary crime story with a wry twist.

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Final Exam

Peter Green (Pembroke 1958)

'Exams tend to corrupt; final exams corrupt finally.' This novel is about exams, literature, sex, cancer and time. Part 1: 1961: Examining a mind. Pembroke College, Cambridge. Peter Green and his friends Jack (big, dangerous) and Casey (small, sinister) face final examinations in English. Keen, they discuss their literary ideas. Peter, whose main study-aid is sexual pleasure, discards lissom Arabella, one of his two girlfriends. Competitive exams apparently subvert left-wing ideals. He alienates a don, Haggerty.

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Common People

Alison Light (Churchill 1973)

Family history is a massive phenomenon of our times but what are we after when we go in search of our ancestors? Beginning with her grandparents, Alison Light moves between the present and the past, in an extraordinary series of journeys over two centuries, across Britain and beyond. Epic in scope and deep in feeling, Common People is a family history but also a new kind of public history, following the lives of the migrants who travelled the country looking for work.

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