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Having taught at Cambridge for nearly forty years, Alan MacFarlane sets forth a personal but also dispassionate attempt to understand how this ancient university developed and changed and how it continues to influence those who pass through it.

This book delves into the history and architecture as well as the charm and the ghosts of Cambridge; it is for anyone who studies, teaches, visits, or is intrigued by this great intellectual centre.

��“There have been many books on both Oxford and Cambridge,” MacFarlane writes, “Particularly documenting their history, but also sometimes trying to understand how they work today. Most of them are written by outsiders, who are interested observers, or by insiders who find it difficult to detach themselves from their life within the system. Because Cambridge is a largely oral culture, based on semi-secret practices, outsiders would find it impossible to penetrate far beneath the surface. My own experience of forty years in the ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges, teaching and acting in several capacities and trying to achieve various goals, has given me an insider’s sense of the forces and conventions by which the place works. This is the anthropological participant fieldwork.

“Yet I am also an observer and outsider. I was trained for twelve years in Oxford at school and the ̽��ֱ�� and went to two London Colleges (LSE and SOAS) after Oxford. I spend much time in Asia, in Nepal, Japan and China, both in universities and elsewhere. So Cambridge has retained its otherness, its strangeness. I still try to fit it within a wider world, as well as a deeper history.“

Alan MacFarlane is Professor of Anthropological Science at the ̽��ֱ�� and a Life Felllow of King's College. In 1986 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He has published widely in history and anthropology.

“I much enjoyed the Cambridge book - full of wisdom, warmth and great stories, a kind of manifesto for the liberal arts as well as a song of love for a place.”��- Michael Chaplin, Screenwriter and Playwright

“I have been reading and enjoying the book on Cambridge. As always with Alan Macfarlane’s work, it is whimsical, elegant, informative, scholarly, cosmopolitan and also gentle and friendly in its tone. Greatly enjoyable and very useful to those who don't know much about the intricacies of life at Cambridge.”��- Srijana Das, Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge

“Alan Macfarlane's Reflections on Cambridge is at once an intimate memoir and a practical guidebook. It offers the insights of a seasoned anthropologist about an ancient university as complex as any remote society, opening up the world of Cambridge institutions to readers everywhere in clear, engaging prose. As a newcomer to Cambridge, I found Macfarlane's book an invaluable resource.”��- Sara Shneiderman, Research Fellow, St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge

̽��ֱ��author will be at the official UK launch at Heffer’s bookshop, Trinity Street, between 6.30 and 8.30 this evening. All welcome.
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