Arena of Ambition: The History of the Cambridge Union

(Hardback)

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Older than fourteen colleges and the Boat Race, the Cambridge Union has been an important part of university life at Cambridge since its foundation in 1815. Ex-Presidents have included John Maynard Keynes, Robert Harris, Arianna Huffington and Douglas Hurd, as well as an Olympic medallist, an Oscar nominee, and two winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Generations of undergraduates have flocked to its celebrated debating chamber and spoken as equals with its distinguished guests: Prime Ministers like Baldwin and Churchill, Presidents like Roosevelt and Reagan, and controversial figures like Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell. Stephen Parkinson, an ex-President of the Union, charts the history of the Union from its nineteenth-century origins, focusing particularly on the turbulent Second World War and post-war years, during which the Union building was hit by a German bomb and commandeered by the army, future Cabinet ministers fell out over bitterly contested elections, and controversies raged about the admission of women and the place of such an antiquated club in a modern university. It is the thrilling story of a student society like no other.

Reviews

'Stephen Parkinson has written a hugely impressive history of the Cambridge Union; scholarly, nuanced and well written, with a perceptible fondness for the institution. As a nursery for some of the most talented, witty, intelligent and cringe-makingly precocious of our future leaders, the Union Society chamber was consciously based on that of the House of Commons. As an insight onto the doings of our leaders before they were famous, this fine book will amuse and instruct. In a society that prizes debate more in the abstract than the action, it will remind us of what political discourse once was like, and ought to be again.' -- Andrew Roberts, Historian and author of 'Masters & Commanders.'
'At Cambridge you worshipped, you reviled or you ignored the Union or it scared you (and me) witless. But you never learned about its origins and history. Stephen Parkinson has done this for us, producing a book thats informative and respectful without being fawning or pompous. Its a good read, as well as good history.' -- Matthew Parris

Author Bio

Stephen Parkinson graduated from Cambridge in 2004, and was President of the Union in Lent Term that year. He spent two years in the Conservative Research Department before becoming Director of Research at the Centre for Policy Studies. In late 2007 he returned to Conservative Central Office, where he works on the party's target seats campaign.