University of Cambridge - Faculty of English

Unseen Peter Shaffer play revealed at Trinity

ta385 — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:41:14 +0000

Trinity College is celebrating the centenary of the birth of twin brothers Peter Shaffer (1926-2016) and Anthony Shaffer (1926-2001) who both studied at Trinity and went on to become award-winning playwrights. Peter bequeathed his substantial archive of playscripts, correspondence and photographs to Trinity College.

PhD student James Critchley came across the unstaged play Our Lady of the Volcano in the archive, while studying Shaffer’s first play, Five Finger Exercise. The play had been catalogued by archivists, but has remained completely unknown. Our Lady of the Volcano reflects the importance of Italy in Shaffer’s creative life. Set on the sultry Amalfi Coast, the plot swirls around two British travellers staying in a villa and their interactions – for better or worse – with other residents.

James Critchley says: "It's about competing kinds of romance narratives, primarily relating to the Brando-esque Jim Suckling, and his various encounters in relation to a religious festival near Sorrento. And in this kind of steamy, tempestuous sensuality, you can see the growing influence of writers such as Tennessee Williams, who Shaffer admired."

For Critchley, the play is intriguing for its cinematic influences, at a time when Hollywood films set in Italy – among them Roman Holiday, Three Coins in the Fountain, Boy on a Dolphin – proved highly popular.

"It emerges from a real immersion in the cinematic world of the early 1960s - these films made in Italian studios fed into Shaffer’s thinking. It was quite unusual at the time to see a play set outdoors, in an Italian villa, so the play is an example of him thinking across different media."

Our Lady of the Volcano marks a transition in the playwright’s early work, Critchley argues.

"Shaffer longed to leave behind the world of slammed doors and actual breakfasts being consumed in an atmosphere of domestic tension. He wanted to reinvent theatre. Of course, in later plays like Royal Hunt or Amadeus, he can be seen confidently working towards what he called ‘Total Theatre’: a mode of performance in which music, mime, movement might all play a role as important as scripted text.

"Even though the play never made it to stage, it is fascinating to see a writer developing his craft: to peek, as it were, behind the curtain. We can see in Our Lady ideas and scenarios that he would go on to flesh out more fully in the mature works of his later career."

James, who began exploring the Shaffer Archive as an undergraduate, said his PhD offered an amazing opportunity to understand Shaffer’s evolution, as well as the ups and downs charted in his correspondence.

"It's really exciting to be up close and personal so to speak with the projects that didn't necessarily make it to publication, but which still have all of the kind of thrilling imprints of a writer whose legacy continues to flourish today."

Shaffer at Cambridge

Peter and Anthony Shaffer were conscripted to the coal mines in Kent as ‘Bevin Boys’ during the Second World War. After that, in 1947, aged 21, they arrived at Trinity, Anthony to study Law and Peter, history.

Peter Shaffer described student life as ‘heaven’ and Cambridge ‘an astonishing place for many reasons.’ He attended lectures of all kinds, including by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and he met EM Forster at King’s College, where the novelist was an Honorary Fellow.

Peter entered a short story competition set by Forster and although he did not win, he did receive an invitation to tea. He recalled: "I said I would love to have tea with him and I went round in some awe of the great man. And he served me tea and he was very shy. … it was tremendously encouraging … the fact that he liked the story and it had merits and he had a way of conveying its demerits … that was very, very graceful."

Enduring legacy

Peter Shaffer’s breakthrough came in 1958 with Five Finger Exercise. He would go on write acclaimed plays that continue to be staged today: a production of Equus opens in London this month and a major new production of Amadeus has been announced for 2027 in UK. Only last December Trinity alumnus Will Sharpe directed Amadeus for television, playing the title role himself.

Anthony Shaffer trained as a barrister but devoted his life to stage and film following the success of Sleuth in 1970. His film credits include Hitchcock’s Frenzy and the cult classic The Wicker Man.

In the centenary year, Trinity will announce the fifth Shaffer Playwright-in-Residence, a studentship established with funding from the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation for early-career playwrights.

More information

A catalogue of the Sir Peter Shaffer Archive at Trinity College is available online. Researchers are welcome to consult items in the archive by appointment with the Wren Library.

James Critchley has written an essay, 'An unpublished play by Peter Shaffer', for The Times Literary Supplement.

His research is funded by the Alice and James Penney Studentship in English Literature.

This story was originally published by Trinity College.

A PhD student at Trinity College has unearthed a complete, unpublished play 65 years after Peter Shaffer wrote it - and before he reignited the world of theatre with the acclaimed plays The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, and Amadeus.

He wanted to reinvent theatre

James Critchley

Trinity College Cambridge

Title page of Peter Shaffer's Our Lady.

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Celebrating women through research: The Cambridge Festival marks International Women’s Day

zs332 — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:13:31 +0000

To mark International Women’s Day (Sunday 8 March), the Cambridge Festival (16 March–2 April) is spotlighting the outstanding achievements of women across a wide range of disciplines.

Original version of medieval England’s ‘best-seller’ discovered

ta385 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The only surviving original version of one of late medieval England’s most popular works, Richard Rolle’s Emending of Life, has been identified in Shrewsbury School. The 14th-century manuscript features unique elements, shedding new light on the work of a writer far more widely circulated than Geoffrey Chaucer.

Sycamore Gap tree-inspired choral work world premieres

ta385 — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 07:00:00 +0000

The Sycamore Gap tree was an iconic 120-year-old sycamore tree growing at Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. It was illegally felled in 2023, sparking international outrage.

“It was in many ways an axis mundi, a ‘world tree’,” says Macfarlane, Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities at the Faculty of English and a Fellow of Emmanuel College.

“Although it was a single tree growing where there should really be a forest, it nevertheless became a focus for many of our complex, passionate, contradictory feelings about trees, forests and the living world more broadly.”

“I decided that, instead of just writing a series of contemporary requiems … I wanted to widen the whole frame of the work and take a much longer view of tree-human relations in England and beyond.”

“In the libretto I pull the temporal lens right back to the re-emergence of trees and forests in northern Europe towards the end of the Pleistocene,” Macfarlane says. The World Tree’s first movement is called ‘Glacial Maximum’.

“I am interested as much in the longue durée of human-forest relations as in the acute event of the Sycamore Gap Tree’s felling, and the outpouring of love, grief and anger which followed.”

Macfarlane’s libretto has been set to music by the Finnish-Canadian composer Matthew Whittall and the premiere will be conducted by Nils Schweckendiek, himself an alumnus of Clare College, Cambridge.

The final movement, ‘The Word for World Is Forest’, imagines a future forest flourishing on the uplands where that one tree once stood. Between these two movements come eight others with titles such as ‘Wildwood’, ‘Song of the Axe’ and ‘Pollen: a Polyphony’.

Responding to the conviction of two men, in May 2025, for felling the Sycamore Gap Tree, Macfarlane said: “The historical-psychological echoes and rhymes of this event are many. The intersection of ecocide and toxic masculinity is nothing new.”

“I thought immediately of the first story of mindless tree-felling by two glory-seeking males: the account in the Epic of Gilgamesh (a text circa 4400 years old in its Sumerian form), of how Gilgamesh and Enkidu travelled to the Sacred Cedar Wood, slew its guardian spirit Humbaba, felled the tallest cedar in the forest and took its lumber — and Humbaba’s head — back to Uruk as trophies.”

Robert Macfarlane’s award-winning books, including Is a River Alive? (2025), Underland (2019), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012) and The Wild Places (2007), have been widely adapted for music, film, television, radio and theatre. He has previously written operas, plays, and films including River (2022) and Mountain (2017), both narrated by Willem Dafoe. As a lyricist, he has written songs and albums with musicians including Cosmo Sheldrake, Karine Polwart and Johnny Flynn, with whom he has released two albums, Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021) and The Moon Also Rises (2023) and an EP, Six Signs (2022). In 2022, with the actor-director Simon McBurney he co-adapted Susan Cooper's classic fantasy novel The Dark Is Rising into a twelve-part BBC audio drama series.

The World Tree world premiered at Helsinki’s Temppeliaukio Church on 18 November 2025, with additional performances that week in Kotka, Nurmijärvi and Vihti.

‘The World Tree’, written by Professor Robert Macfarlane, was performed for the first time by the Helsinki Chamber Choir in Finland.

I am interested as much in the longue durée of human-forest relations

Robert Macfarlane

Monty Trent

The Sycamore Gap Tree

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Public invited to share their most vivid memories to aid research

jg533 — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 08:11:05 +0000

Do you have a memory so vivid you can relive it as if it's happening all over again, re-experiencing the physical sensations and emotions just as you did in that moment?

Researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Durham want to understand more about vivid memories: how these experiences differ from person to person, how they evolve as we age, and how they changed across modern history. To do it, they need your help.

The team has launched an online public survey asking people to describe two of their most vivid memories. They’re hoping for thousands of responses from people of all age-groups and walks of life, to help them build an anonymised database representative of the whole population.

The findings will inform new ways to help people remember things in more vivid detail. They will also help researchers to understand the nature of human memories across the lifespan, and how ideas about memory have evolved over centuries.

While the modern scientific definition of vivid memory tends to emphasise visual detail, the team is taking a novel approach by drawing on Shakespeare’s texts and historical diaries for a richer definition, encompassing many additional sensations.

Dr Kasia Mojescik, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge who is involved in the project, said: “For the first time, cognitive neuroscientists are working directly with humanities scholars to design experiments that try to understand vivid memories from an entirely new perspective.”

Professor Charles Fernyhough in the Department of Psychology at Durham University, and a member of the project team, said: “By exploring historical and literary perspectives on memory, we’re including many aspects of the experience of remembering - such as strong emotions, and the feeling of being present in the moment - that have been neglected in purely scientific studies.”

Using machine learning tools, the team will look for recurring patterns in the experiences that are remembered with the greatest detail throughout our lives.

Trends that emerge across age groups might explain why, even as we feel our memories are becoming less precise as we age, our most precious or identity-shaping memories often remain as vivid as if they happened yesterday.

Dr Martha McGill in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, a member of the project team, will reflect on how the experience of remembering has changed over time, looking at British autobiographical writings from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

Professor Jon Simons in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, and project lead, said: “Many people have at least one really vivid memory. For me it’s the birth of my first child. It’s not something that I just know happened – it’s an event I can go back and relive in incredible detail, like mental time travel.”

The team hopes that the findings might also inform future pharmaceutical treatments and therapeutic interventions for memory problems.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE PART IN THE SURVEY

More information on the research project, When Memories Come Alive, is available here.

This research is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s pilot scheme for interdisciplinary research: the Cross Research Council Responsive Mode scheme (CRCRM).

Researchers have launched a public survey to help them unlock the secrets of vivid memory, and find ways to help us better recall past experiences

For the first time, cognitive neuroscientists are working directly with humanities scholars to design experiments that try to understand vivid memories from an entirely new perspective.

Dr Kasia Mojescik

Getty/JGI/Jamie Grill

Smiling woman with eyes closed

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British Academy elects 12 Cambridge researchers to Fellowship in 2025

ta385 — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 08:52:00 +0000

They are among 92 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations.

The Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are:

Professor Jeremy Adelman (Faculty of History; Global History Lab; Darwin College)

Professor Anthony Bale (Faculty of English; Girton College)

Professor Annabel Brett (Faculty of History; Gonville and Caius College)

Professor Hasok Chang (Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science; Clare Hall)

Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville (Cambridge Judge Business School; Trinity Hall)

Professor Barak Kushner (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Corpus Christi College)

Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr (Dept. of Archaeology, Clare College)

Professor Yael Navaro (Dept. of Social Anthropology; Newnham College)

Professor Joanna Page (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics; Centre of Latin American Studies; Robinson College)

Professor Clare Pettitt (Faculty of English; Emmanuel College)

Professor Diane Reay (Faculty of Education)

Professor John Robb (Dept. of Archaeology; Peterhouse)

Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1700 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.

Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. The Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.

In 2025, a total of 58 UK Fellows, 30 International Fellows and four Honorary Fellows have been elected to the British Academy Fellowship.

Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr said: “I am honoured and delighted to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. As a native of South America who has been welcomed and encouraged throughout my career in the UK, I feel particularly privileged to join the academy. My work spans anthropology and archaeology and it is pleasing to see inter-disciplinarity recognised. Research in human origins is very dependent upon official and community support across many countries, and I am deeply grateful to the people of Brazil, India, Libya, Melanesia and specially Kenya who have made my work possible (and so enjoyable!), and I look forward to contributing to the Academy’s global mission.”

Professor Joanna Page said: “I am deeply honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and I look forward to supporting its mission. It is more important than ever to uphold the value of the humanities and interdisciplinary approaches in forging more just and sustainable futures. Learning from the perspectives and experiences of other regions, including Latin America, is essential to that work. I would particularly like to thank the vibrant community of Latin Americanists at Cambridge – staff and students, past and present – who have made this such a stimulating place to do research.”

Professor Barak Kushner said: “It is an honour to be recognised by the British Academy, though also a bit daunting to be put on par with scholars I have looked up to for years. Recognition of this kind brings more attention to the importance of transnational history when researching East Asia and the need to look beyond national borders.”

Professor Yael Navaro said: “I feel truly honoured to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. It couldn't be a more important time to mobilise the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our era."

Welcoming the Fellows, Professor Susan J. Smith PBA, new President of the British Academy, said: “One of my first acts as the incoming President of the British Academy is to welcome this year’s newly elected Fellows. What a line-up! With specialisms ranging from the neuroscience of memory to the power of music and the structural causes of poverty, they represent the very best of the humanities and social sciences. They bring years of experience, evidence-based arguments and innovative thinking to the profound challenges of our age: managing the economy, enabling democracy, and securing the quality of human life.

“This year, we have increased the number of new Fellows by nearly ten per cent to cover some spaces between disciplines. Champions of research excellence, every new Fellow enlarges our capacity to interpret the past, understand the present, and shape resilient, sustainable futures. It is a privilege to extend my warmest congratulations to them all.”

Twelve academics from the University of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social science

It couldn't be a more important time to mobilise the social sciences and humanities to address some of the most critical issues of our era.

Yael Navaro

The British Academy

The exterior of the British Academy in London

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Lost English legend decoded, solving a Chaucerian mystery

ta385 — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 03:00:00 +0000

A medieval literary puzzle which has stumped scholars including MR James for 130 years has finally been solved. Cambridge scholars now believe the Song of Wade, a long-lost treasure of English culture, was a chivalric romance not a monster-filled epic. The discovery solves the most famous mystery in Chaucer's writings and provides rare evidence of a medieval preacher referencing pop culture in a sermon.

Study reveals Britain’s poetic obsession with the humble lawnmower

ta385 — Sat, 17 May 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Over the last half-century, British poets including Philip Larkin and Andrew Motion have driven a ‘lawnmower poetry microgenre’, using the machine to explore childhood, masculinity, violence, addiction, mortality and much more, new research shows. Francesca Gardner traces the tradition goes back to the 17th-century poet Andrew Marvell who used mowing – with a scythe – to comment on the violence of the English Civil War.