Nostalgia: Your memories of yesteryear

WE previously published in Photographic Memories pictures from the Year 1981.

Here is Frank Salmon’s memory about the photo of Northgate High School’s Oxbridge successes:

I am in the back row, second from the left, looking horribly smug. In fact I was as surprised as I was delighted, given that I never expected to get into Cambridge!

I spent eight years living there and then went to teach History of Architecture at Manchester University from 1989 to 2002. In 2006 returned to Cambridge University, where I am now head of the department of History of Art and a Fellow of St John’s College.

I consider myself to have been incredibly fortunate in life, thanks to my incredibly supportive mother and father (who still live in Ipswich) and my wife and two young children.

I’m 50 this week, though, and sadly have to report that all the work has made my slab of brown hair go grey (as can be seen at www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/people or at www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxlruicANvc).

In the front row of the 1981 photo, second from the right, is Kate Davey – with whom I am still friends. Kate read History at Cambridge and is now an eminent barrister in London. She is studying for a PhD in medieval architectural history in her spare time and knows as much about Suffolk churches as anyone.

Frank Salmon,

Cambridge