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Living History: Emily Murray

Living History: Emily Murray

My defining moment at Trinity

I was born in 1978, the same year female undergraduates were admitted to the College, so these 40-year celebrations are of great personal significance to me.

As a student, when I heard about Trinity’s Secret Mallard Society and spotted the duck high in the Hall’s rafters, I knew I wanted to join.

The requirements?

  1. Scale the heights of Trinity’s Great Hall at dead of night (my co-Mallarder Andy and I used climbing ropes, string and a tennis ball, plus a flattened Coke can to gain access to the Minstrels Gallery). Getting caught in the act would, I was informed by a Society member, lead to an immediate Sending Down
  2. Retrieve the Mallard from the rafter (during my tenure this was a plastic decoy duck – follicly-challenged Right Said Fred had, apparently, made off with the wooden Mallard at a recent May Ball)
  3. Photograph yourself with the Mallard under Henry VIII’s watchful eye
  4. Put the duck back up in the rafters (we did this two weeks later, having first wired the wildfowl with shining red LED eyes).

This is how, in my second term at Trinity, I became the first female member of the Secret Mallard Society, which remains one of my proudest achievements.

*The curators would like to emphasize that nightclimbing of all types at Trinity is not permitted.

About

Emily Murray (née Rogers) matriculated in 1996 and studied English. She is the founder of the award-winning Pink House, and her first book, Pink House Living, is published by Ryland Peters & Small in March 2019.

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