Pairings: Catherine Arnold

Catherine Arnold

Alumna; HM Ambassador to Mongolia

For me, Nevile’s Court was love at first sight. Simplicity for every sense. The visual lines embracing silence in cool, textured stone. The arches under the Wren Library were my favourite haunt as a student. Looking inward, time seemed frozen and irrelevant. Looking out through the grille at tossing willows, honking geese, clamouring tourists, it was like I was in another world.

From coming up to Trinity to leaving – so much changes. Dreams, hopes, upsets. In Nevile’s Court I could dissolve into the silence of years, which leave nothing but feet etched in the stairs. Is there a better antidote to the euphoria or despair life brings than to sit and reflect on the myriad who have been here before and will come after?

I have returned many times. Often to be part of a collective celebration or commemoration: weddings, memorials, gatherings. But sometimes alone, to drift back into its timeless calm. I took the call that would let me know if I’d passed the Foreign Office’s promotional exam from under one of the arches. I felt safe in the knowledge that pass or fail, both would have been shrunk to size. Humbled by history. (I passed). Vanitas Vanitatum…