The beauty of Pembroke College, Cambridge, captured in new book

Understandably, it would appear that editing Pembroke College, Cambridge – The Buildings and Gardens, a new book about the third oldest of all the University of Cambridge colleges, was something of a labour of love for Chris Smith.

For not only is Lord Smith – or Lord Smith of Finsbury, to give him his full title – the master of the college (a position he has held since 2015), but he was also an undergraduate and a PhD student there, as well as president of the Cambridge Union Society, before going on to have a successful career in politics.

“As you probably know, Pembroke has just completed a major new development immediately across the road from the historic college, along the side of Mill Lane,” says Chris, who was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 1997 to 2001 – he also chaired the Environment Agency from 2008 to 2014 – speaking to the Cambridge Independent from the master’s lodge.

“And it’s created three new courtyards and 100 new student rooms, and an auditorium and an exhibition gallery and lots of meeting and seminar and teaching rooms – and we wanted to celebrate this moment in the college’s history by publishing a book on the buildings and gardens of Pembroke.

“The title came from the quest of Ray Dolby, whose will has given £51m to Pembroke that has enabled us to go ahead with the new development.

“And in his will, he left funds for the buildings and grounds of Pembroke, so we thought in order to celebrate the new quarter of Cambridge that we’ve created, and in order to celebrate his generous legacy, we wanted to produce a book entitled ‘The Buildings and Gardens of Pembroke’.

“It spans both the historic parts of the college and the new parts of the college that we’ve created; it has a range of chapters on the architecture and history of the buildings we have on our historic site, on the architecture, the sustainability, the gardens we’ve created on the new side of Trumpington Street, and it’s a very handsome book – we’re very proud of it.”

Notable Pembroke alumni, including actor and comedian Eric Idle and author and historian Stephen Halliday, contributed to the book, which paints a vivid portrait of life at the college over the years.

Chris, an honorary fellow of the college since 2004, compiled these written testaments for the publication.

“I did; we had 16 different people writing different chapters of the book,” he explains, “they’re a mixture of current fellows, alumni, and professional consultants, such as architects and landscape designers who were involved in the creation of the new Mill Lane site. And it hangs together very well.

“I did all the editing, I approached the various writers of chapters, I organised all the taking of photographs, and the placement of the photographs with their captions right the way through the book.”

As an alumnus of Pembroke, did Chris include some of his memories of his time as a student there?

“I wrote an introduction, with some bits of memory within it, but most of the memories come from our alumni from across the years,” he replies, “including a chapter by Eric Idle, one of the Monty Python team, who is an alumnus of Pembroke, and he wrote a chapter about the Pembroke Smokers, the comedy turns that people did back in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Chris adds: “I think the one that really moved me most was one by a student who graduated last summer.

“She had won the Orwell Prize for Journalism whilst she was here at Pembroke, and I asked her if she could write a chapter on her recent experience of Pembroke’s buildings and gardens – and she has written a beautiful chapter, that is the final chapter of the book.

“It’s very movingly written, very well written, and I think that, along with Eric Idle’s, would be the one that I would point people towards as a first experience of the book.”

On what makes Pembroke College, founded in 1347 by Marie de St Pol, special, Chris says: “I think it has a really welcoming, open-arms, inclusive kind of feel to it.

“It’s a very friendly place; all of our students when I ask them, ‘Why did you apply to Pembroke?’ they say, ‘Well I came on an open day, I looked around, I thought the gardens were very beautiful, the porters were very friendly, and then I heard about the food’.

“These are not bad reasons for choosing a college.”

He adds: “When I was a student here, the food was far worse than it is now… the gardens were still lovely, and the buildings were lovely, and there was a very friendly spirit to the place.

“That is something that hasn’t changed over the last 50 years.”

Chris looks back very fondly on his time as a student at Pembroke.

“I do, yes… I spent three years as an undergraduate, studying English, and then I spent three years as a postgraduate, doing a PhD on Wordsworth and Coleridge, and they were six of the very happiest years of my life.”

So returning as master all those years later must have been special?

“There’s a rather lovely circularity about coming back here as master after a career in the wider world,” says the former Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, “and I’ve now been master for nine and a half years.

“It’s been the very best job I’ve ever had, I think, and that includes being Secretary of State in the government in ’97 to 2001. And I very much enjoyed editing the book.”

Pembroke College, Cambridge – The Buildings and Gardens is available now.

Chris believes that the book has some “very special photographs that really capture the beauty of Pembroke as a campus”. The book is available to buy from the Porters’ Lodge at the college.