Glittering prizes
Friday, October 26th, 2007
This week I attended a dinner for graduates of Magdalene College, Cambridge. There are five of us who are Members of Parliament, which it is alleged, is the highest of any Oxbridge College at Westminster. This is curious as Magdalene was never blessed with brilliant academic success, but since going co-educational has seen a considerable improvement.
Frederic Raphael wrote a series about the lives of young Cambridge graduates, called The Glittering Prizes, and has now written a sequel. It is indeed interesting to see how we all have got on in life. For instance, I went to a lecture the other day given by a Cambridge contemporary who has led a most successful life! Said individual certainly had a fair share of emotional difficulties in the past! Indeed we all, in our different ways, have had our moments good and bad. Some, whom I knew, who single mindedly planned political careers, never made it to the House of Commons.
I hugely enjoyed the Glittering Prizes mark 1, and will now look forward to the next series. As I have discovered, life is indeed all too often stranger then fiction…..