Living History: Alexandra Walsham

My defining moment at Trinity

My abiding memories of my early years in Trinity are of climbing the stairs to my PhD supervisor Patrick Collinson’s room in Bishop’s Hostel. He was impossibly short of time as Regius Professor of History, but his door was always open and he was never too busy to offer reassurance or a kind word. Shortly after I submitted my thesis, I recall him playing the rather gloomy Elizabethan ballad ‘Fortune my Foe’ on his harpsichord in celebration!

Now it is my own students who navigate the labyrinth of Blue Boar Court to find my office in search of advice and guidance, consolation and encouragement. Here too the serious conversation is mixed with excitement about learning and a liberal dose of laughter. However turbulent the times in the outside world and whatever changes the future may bring to the College within, this should remain the same. Semper eadem.

Alexandra Walsham was elected a Fellow of Trinity and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 2010, the first woman to have held this Chair since its foundation.