King's College, Cambridge

21/08/2026

All year round, King's grounds are teeming with life. So much so, it takes an army of avid photographers just to capture a fraction of it. If you've taken any pictures of the critters of King's this year, please do share them with us!

📷 1 Hummingbird hawk-moth captured by Geoff Murphy and Ed Valletta just before the 2026 August wildflower meadow harvest

📷 2 King's' newest fox cub, Reynard Keynes, captured by .clarkson.photography in May 2026

📷 3 Peregrine Falcon losing its lunch (pigeon) on the Chapel. Bill Lawton Cambridge,UK Photographer August 2026

📷 4 Canadian Goose braving the icy waters of the Cam in late January 2026. Nick 'Peril' Harris

📷 5 Kingfisher by the Cam August 2025 .clarkson.photography

14/08/2026

So we had some trouble baling our harvest 😬

Last week Bryn and Cosmo the horses mowed and then sifted our meadow ready for baling this week. We're 2 horsepower down, but an army of gardeners and 1 'Rapid Rob' up.

To keep to our philosophy of the lowest negative impact on the meadow (and wider environment) we have once again ignored large, heavy tractors, instead opting for a push-along baler. However, owing to yet more heatwaves the process wasn't straightforward.

Note from Nick: this one was even harder to shoot than last week. Please send your love (and cold beverages) to our heroic gardening team.

07/08/2026

So we just mowed our lawn with horses...again.

Every year since 2020, King's has teamed up with the wonderful to harvest our wildflower meadow. And it's a fun couple of days out.

But it's more than just a spectacle. It's vital to maintaining our wildflower meadow and all the extra life that meadow brings to King's.

Next week the harvest will be baled, ready to be used to plant more wildflower meadows across Cambridge.

Let me know in the comments if you want to follow that process too. (This video took quite a lot out of me to film and edit, and I imagine next week will be the same).

06/08/2026

When University of Cambridge post-graduates receive their degrees, the streets of Cambridge become a kaleidoscope. But what do all the different coloured hoods mean?

This particular rainbow of recent King's graduates features a variety of degrees, but each graduate is linked.

Doctor Leow Kah Shin (Left) received his PhD in Land Economy, with a dissertation on “Essays on Real Estate Finance and Machine Learning”.

He is also a co-founder of Quantedge Capital, which established the Quantedge Foundation, which in turn launched the Quantedge-Cambridge Masters Scholarships (International) for students with refugee status or from areas of conflict.

The wonderful thing about these photos is that each of the other graduates featured were recipients of the scholarship Kah Shin helped to create.

Joelle came to Cambridge from Syria in 2025, graduating this summer with an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies.

Her dissertation was on “The River and the Museum: The Making of French Mandate Cultural Order in Antakya, 1926–1939”.

Joelle is also the founder of the The Water Commons Archives which documents critical spatial histories on water bordering systems in Syria and its neighbouring countries. She is continuing this work post-graduation.

Originally from Ukraine, Sophia received her LLM this summer and aims to work in international arbitration (cross-border disputes). In particular she hopes to contribute to the postwar reconstruction in Ukraine, specifically with regard to the justice system.

Also from Ukraine, Fedir received his MASt in Astrophysics this summer, having focused on studying the distribution of gas around galaxy clusters. Next year, he will be continuing this work with a PhD at King’s.

29/07/2026

The Waldburg shires team will be back at King's next week (August 3,4 and 6) to harvest our wildflower meadow.

Ticket link in comment below 🔗

Each year the meadow is mowed by heavy shire horses, using a 100-year-old mower and a traditional hay wain. The reason we use this traditional method (rather than a tractor) is it both lowers carbon emissions and exerts much less pressure on the soil, which protects the delicate structure of the meadow, helping ensure next year's growth.

The harvest is then distributed across Cambridge to make more wildflower meadows, as well as winter feed for local livestock.

If you want to come see the Waldburg Shires team in action, book a Chapel and Grounds tickets and plan to be on site between 10am-1pm August 3,4 or 6.

📷 Lloyd Mann

24/07/2026

What was Alan Turing really like?

The ‘father of modern computing’ has an isolated mathematician image, but new research rips that up.

In the final years of his life, Turing wrote a racy short story. Until now, it’s never been transcribed or fully studied.

‘Pryce’s Buoy’, a six-page, scruffily hand-written fragment of a short story, cared for by archivists at King's College, Cambridge, reveals a playful man overcoming trauma and defiantly embracing his homosexuality.

Professor Sarah Dillon’s findings, published today in The Review of English Studies, will surprise anyone who accepts The Imitation Game’s portrayal of Turing.

“We’ve distilled a version of Turing that is a two-dimensional stereotype,” says Dillon. “His short story reveals a very different man: playful, funny, cheeky, literary, and someone who really liked sex.”

Professor Dillon identifies a fellow Bletchley Park veteran as the inspiration behind Turing’s story, and explains how it relates to his own arrest for gross indecency.

Find out more about this short story through the link in the comments 🔗

📸 Photo credits to the National Portrait Gallery for the photo and King's College, Cambridge for the story page

17/07/2026

What better way to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of John Dowland, widely recognised as the greatest English composer of lute music and songs, than visiting the Rowe Music Library at King’s guided by the College Librarian?

Find three of Dowland’s most popular songs in the ‘Turpyn Lute Book’, a manuscript compiled around 1610 and given to the College by John Maynard Keynes (KC 1902).

The songs ‘Now, o now’ and ‘Can she excuse my wrongs’ are part of the Late Night Baroque programme on 21 July at the BBC Proms, performed by tenor Laurence Kilsby with the Jupiter Ensemble directed by lutenist Thomas Dunford.

King's College Library, Cambridge

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of composer and lutenist John Dowland (born ca. 1563) who is widely recognised as the greatest English composer of lute music and lute songs. It g…