Topic description and stories

Ukraine’s cultural heritage faces destruction

15 Mar 2022

Ukraine has a cultural inheritance that has outlasted atrocities and Soviet oppression, writes Dr Olenka Pevny. We must ensure it survives Russia's...

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Image from Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica

Sir Isaac Newton’s Cambridge papers added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register

01 Dec 2017

The Cambridge papers of Sir Isaac Newton, including early drafts and Newton’s annotated copies of Principia Mathematica – a work that changed the...

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Three Jane Austen letters are shown together for the first time

28 Mar 2017

An exhibition offering a rare chance to see some of Jane Austen's letters has opened at Cambridge University Library. The correspondence on display...

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CGLI members visit the exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Museum archive reconnects a London-based Congolese community with its heritage

10 Mar 2017

When Reverend Kenred Smith captured moments of life in the Congo over 120 years ago, he couldn’t have imagined that the photos – now in Cambridge's...

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Flamenco by Veyis Polat (cropped)

Flamenco: what happens when a grassroots musical genre becomes a marker of culture

18 Aug 2016

What happens when a musical genre becomes an identifier for a region? In his book Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain ...

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From Pulp to Fiction: our love affair with paper

17 Mar 2016

It may seem strange to describe paper as technology, but its arrival in England in about 1300 was a pivotal moment in cultural history. That story is...

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Mr Knight’s galliard by John Dowland

‘Crown jewels’ of English lute music go online

11 Dec 2014

Handwritten copies of scores by composers of English lute music have been digitised in a programme to make a precious legacy available to...

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Two of 38 teapots found on the site of Clapham's coffeeshop in Cambridge

A tale of 38 teapots: an intimate portrait of 18th-century sociability

20 Oct 2014

At a seminar tomorrow (22 October 2014) archaeologist Craig Cessford will talk about the challenges of working on ‘clearance deposits’. He will use...

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The “wonderful rubbish” of the Gilf Kebir desert

17 Jun 2014

A chance find in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers adds a colourful twist to an exhibition in Paris celebrating the work of ethnographer Leo...

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Ronald Balfour: Cambridge’s own ‘monuments man’

10 Mar 2014

The ‘monuments men’ were a multinational unit of the Allied Forces who operated behind enemy lines during the Second World War to safeguard artistic...

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Codex Zacynthius: at the end of a chapter of the Evangeliarium, the undertext is clearly legible.

Cambridge University Library bids to purchase early Gospel manuscript

14 Dec 2013

Cambridge University Library plans to raise £1.1m to purchase an outstanding Biblical manuscript. Dating from the 6th or 7th century, Codex...

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Drawer of ammonoids from the Woodwardian collection, the founding collection of the Sedgwick Museum, dating to the late 17th and early 18th century

We ask the experts: why do we put things into museums?

26 Nov 2013

Our lives are bound up with objects. Museums are evidence of our deep preoccupation with the things that surround us, whether natural or the product...

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