The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an intellectual secret society

Secret society

A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...

 at the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar

Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe

The Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe is the ordinary of the Church of England's Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers not only the area of Gibraltar in British jurisdiction but also all of mainland Europe, Morocco and the territory of the former Soviet Union...

.

The origin of the Apostles' nickname dates from the number, twelve, of their founders. Membership consists largely of undergraduates, though there have been graduate student members, and members who already hold university and college posts. The society traditionally drew most of its members from St John's

St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....

, King's

King's College, Cambridge

King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....

 and Trinity

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

 Colleges.

Activities and membership

The society is essentially a discussion group. Meetings are held once a week, traditionally on Saturday evenings, during which one member gives a prepared talk on a topic, which is later thrown open for discussion; during the meetings, members used to eat sardines on toast, called "whales". Women first gained acceptance into the society in the 1970s.

The Apostles retain a leather diary of their membership ("the book") stretching back to its founder, which includes handwritten notes about the topics each member has spoken on. It is included in the so-called "Ark", which is a collection of papers with some handwritten notes from the group's early days, about the topics members have spoken on, and the results of the division in which those present voted on the debate. It was a point of honour that the question voted on should bear only a tangential relationship to the matter debated. The members referred to as the "Apostles" are the active, usually undergraduate members; former members are called "angels". Undergraduates apply to become angels after graduating or being awarded a fellowship. Every few years, amid great secrecy, all the angels are invited to an Apostles' dinner at a Cambridge college. There used to be an annual dinner, usually held in London.

Undergraduates being considered for membership are called "embryos" and are invited to "embryo parties", where members judge whether the student should be invited to join. The "embryos" attend these parties without knowing they are being considered for membership. Becoming an Apostle involves taking an oath of secrecy and listening to the reading of a curse, originally written by Apostle Fenton John Anthony Hort

Fenton John Anthony Hort

Fenton John Anthony Hort was an Irish theologian and editor, with Brooke Westcott of a critical edition of The New Testament in the Original Greek.-Life:...

, the theologian, in or around 1851.

Former members have spoken of the life-long bond they feel toward one another. Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women...

, the philosopher, wrote of the Apostles in his memoirs that "the tie of attachment to this society is much the strongest corporate bond which I have known in my life."

Bloomsbury

The Apostles became well known outside Cambridge in the years before the First World War with the rise to eminence of the group of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group

Bloomsbury Group

The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...

. John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...

, Leonard Woolf

Leonard Woolf

Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...

, Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey

Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...

 and his brother James

James Strachey

James Beaumont Strachey was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English...

, G. E. Moore, E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...

 and Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke

Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...

 were all Apostles. Keynes, Woolf and Lytton Strachey subsequently gained prominence as members of Bloomsbury.

Cambridge spy ring

The Apostles came to public attention again following the exposure of the Cambridge spy ring

Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...

 in 1951. Three Cambridge graduates with access to the top levels of government in Britain, one of them a former Apostle, were eventually found to have passed information to the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

. The three known agents were Apostle Guy Burgess

Guy Burgess

Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...

, an MI6

Secret Intelligence Service

The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...

 officer and secretary to the deputy foreign minister; Donald MacLean

Donald Duart Maclean

Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat and member of the Cambridge Five who were members of MI5, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies for the Soviet Union in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" while an undergraduate at Cambridge by...

, foreign office secretary; and Kim Philby

Kim Philby

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...

, MI6 officer and journalist.

In 1963, American writer Michael Straight, also an Apostle, and later publisher of The New Republic

The New Republic

The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

magazine, admitted to a covert relationship with the Soviets, and he named Anthony Blunt

Anthony Blunt

Anthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...

, MI5

MI5

The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

 officer, director of the Courtauld Institute, and art adviser to the Queen

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...

 as his recruiter and a Soviet spy. Confronted with Straight's confession, Blunt acknowledged his own treason and revealed that he had also drawn into espionage his fellow Apostle Leonard "Leo" Long. Straight also told investigators that the Apostle John Peter Astbury had been recruited for Soviet intelligence by either Blunt or Burgess. Leo Long confessed to delivering classified information to the Soviets from 1940 until 1952.

Writers have accused several other Apostles of being witting Soviet agents. Roland Perry

Roland Perry

Roland Perry is a Melbourne-based author best known for his books on history, especially Australia in the two world wars. His Monash: The Outsider Who Won The War, won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' 'Melbourne University Publishing Award' in 2004...

 in his book, The Fifth Man (London: Pan Books, 1994) makes a circumstantial case against Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild

Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild

Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild, GBE, GM, FRS was a biologist by training, a cricketer and a member of the prominent Rothschild family...

, who was a friend to both Burgess and Blunt. The espionage historian John Costello in The Mask of Treachery (London: William Collins & Sons, 1988) points a finger at the mathematician Alister Watson

Alister Watson

Alister George Douglas Watson was a mathematician who was identified by several writers as a key member of the Cambridge spy ring.-Education:...

 and anthropologist Lewis Daly. Kimberley Cornish, in his controversial The Jew of Linz

The Jew of Linz

The Jew of Linz is a controversial 1998 book by Australian writer Kimberley Cornish. It alleges that the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had a profound effect on Adolf Hitler when they were both pupils at the Realschule in Linz, Austria, in the early 1900s...

(London: Century, 1998), makes the rather extravagant claim that Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

 was the "éminence grise" of the Cambridge spies.

In the 1930s when Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, both homosexuals, became Apostles, stories persisted that the membership was mainly homosexual and Marxist

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

. Documents from the Soviet archives included in The Crown Jewels (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev

Oleg Tsarev

Oleg Anatolevich Tsarev is a Dnipropetrovsk businessman and People's Deputy of Ukraine for the Party of Regions.-Family life:...

, indicate that it was Burgess who seduced and led Blunt into the Soviet underground. As the Queen's art adviser, Blunt was knighted in 1956, but was stripped of his knighthood in 1979 after Prime Minister

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

 Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

 publicly named him as a spy — his confession having been kept secret before then.

Former members

Members of the Apostles have included (with the year they joined in brackets, where known):

• George Tomlinson, Bishop of Gibraltar (1820)
• Frederick Denison Maurice, Theologian, Christian Socialist, founder of The Working Men's College. (1823)
• Erasmus Alvey Darwin
  Erasmus Alvey Darwin
  Erasmus Alvey Darwin , nicknamed Eras or Ras, was the older brother of Charles Darwin, born five years earlier, and also brought up at the family home, The Mount House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...
  
  , brother of Charles Darwin (1823)
• John Sterling
  John Sterling (author)
  John Sterling , was a British author.He was born at Kames Castle on the Isle of Bute. He belonged to a family of Scottish origin which had settled in Ireland during the Cromwellian period...
  
  , writer and poet (1825)
• John Mitchell Kemble
  John Mitchell Kemble
  John Mitchell Kemble , English scholar and historian, was the eldest son of Charles Kemble the actor and Maria Theresa Kemble....
  
  , historian (1826)
• Charles Buller
  Charles Buller
  Charles Buller , was a British barrister, politician and reformer.-Background and education:Born in Calcutta, British India, Buller was the son of Charles Buller , a member of a well-known Cornish family, and Barbara Isabella Kirkpatrick, daughter of General William Kirkpatrick, considered an...
  
  , barrister and MP (1826)
• Richard Chenevix Trench
  Richard Chenevix Trench
  Richard Chenevix Trench was an Anglican archbishop and poet.-Life:He was born at Dublin, in Ireland, son of the Dublin writer Melesina Trench, his elder brother was Francis Chenevix Trench. He went to school at Harrow, and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829. In 1830 he visited Spain...
  
  , Christian writer, Archbishop of Dublin (1827)
• Arthur William Buller
  Arthur William Buller
  Sir Arthur William Buller was a British Liberal Party Member of Parliament, who in his early career served as head of a commission of inquiry into education reform in Lower Canada....
  
  , judge of the Supreme Court, Calcutta (1828)
• Arthur Hallam
  Arthur Hallam
  Arthur Henry Hallam was an English poet, best known as the subject of a major work, In Memoriam A.H.H., by his best friend and fellow poet, Alfred Tennyson...
  
  , poet (1829)
• Alfred Tennyson, English
  England
  England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
  
   poet, member of the House of Lords
  House of Lords
  The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
  
   (1829)
• Sir William Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer
  Chancellor of the Exchequer
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
  
   (1847)
• Fenton John Anthony Hort
  Fenton John Anthony Hort
  Fenton John Anthony Hort was an Irish theologian and editor, with Brooke Westcott of a critical edition of The New Testament in the Original Greek.-Life:...
  
  , theologian (1851)
• James Clerk Maxwell
  James Clerk Maxwell
  James Clerk Maxwell of Glenlair was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. His most prominent achievement was formulating classical electromagnetic theory. This united all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and optics into a consistent theory...
  
  , physicist (1852)
• Henry Sidgwick
  Henry Sidgwick
  Henry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women...
  
  , philosopher (1857)
• Henry Jackson
  Henry Jackson (classicist)
  Henry Jackson, OM, , was an English classicist. He served as the vice-master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1914 to 1919, praelector in ancient philosophy from 1875 to 1906 and Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1906 to 1921, and was awarded the Order of Merit on 26...
  
  , classicist (1863)
• Oscar Browning
  Oscar Browning
  Oscar Browning was an English writer, historian, and educational reformer. His greatest achievement was the cofounding, along with Henry Sidgwick, of the Cambridge University Day Training College in 1891...
  
  , educator
• A. N. Whitehead, mathematician, logician and philosopher (1884)
• Roger Eliot Fry, art historian (1887)
• Bertrand Russell
  Bertrand Russell
  Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
  
  , philosopher, mathematician, social activist and logician, member of the Royal Society, Nobel prize winner, member of the House of Lords (1892)
• Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
  Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
  Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson , was a British historian and political activist. He led most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. He was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group.A noted pacifist, Dickinson protested against Britain's...
  
  , historian and philosopher
• J. M. E. McTaggart
  J. M. E. McTaggart
  John McTaggart was an idealist metaphysician. For most of his life McTaggart was a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an exponent of the philosophy of Hegel and among the most notable of the British idealists.-Personal life:J. M. E. McTaggart was born in 1866...
  
  , philosopher
• G. E. Moore, philosopher (1894)
• G. M. Trevelyan
  G. M. Trevelyan
  George Macaulay Trevelyan, OM, CBE, FRS, FBA , was a British historian. Trevelyan was the third son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and great-nephew of Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose staunch liberal Whig principles he espoused in accessible works of literate narrative avoiding a...
  
  , historian (1895)
• G. H. Hardy
  G. H. Hardy
  Godfrey Harold “G. H.” Hardy FRS was a prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis....
  
  , mathematician. (~1897)
• E. M. Forster
  E. M. Forster
  Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
  
  , writer (1901)
• James Kenneth Stephen
  James Kenneth Stephen
  James Kenneth Stephen was an English poet, and tutor to Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.-Early life:...
  
  , poet, tutor to Prince Albert Victor (Eddy) and suspect for Jack the Ripper
• Desmond MacCarthy
  Desmond MacCarthy
  Sir Desmond MacCarthy was a British literary critic and journalist.-Early life and education:MacCarthy was born in Plymouth, Devon, and educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he got to know Lytton Strachey, Bertrand Russell and G. E...
  
  , newspaper critic
• Lytton Strachey
  Lytton Strachey
  Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
  
  , writer and critic (1902)
• James Strachey
  James Strachey
  James Beaumont Strachey was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English...
  
  , translator of Freud
• Gordon Luce, scholar
• Robert Trevelyan, poet and translator (1893)
• Saxon Sydney-Turner
  Saxon Sydney-Turner
  Saxon Arnold Sydney-TurnerMiddle name sometimes spelt, seemingly deliberately, as Arnoll was a member of the Bloomsbury Group who worked as a British civil servant throughout his life.-Early life:...
  
  , civil servant
• Francis Birrell, critic and journalist
• Leonard Woolf
  Leonard Woolf
  Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...
  
   writer and publisher(~1902)
• J. T. Sheppard, classicist, provost of King's College (1902)
• John Maynard Keynes
  John Maynard Keynes
  John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
  
  , economist, member of the House of Lords (1903)
• Rupert Brooke
  Rupert Brooke
  Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...
  
  , poet (1908)
• Gerald Shove
  Gerald Shove
  -Life:Shove was born at Faversham, Kent, the son of Herbert Samuel Shove and his wife Bertha Millen. He was educated at Uppingham School and King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles....
  
  , economist (1909)
• Ferenc Békássy
  Ferenc Békássy
  Ferenc Istvan Dénes Gyula Békássy was a Hungarian poet killed in World War I.He was born in the family mansion at Zsennye in Vas County, western Hungary. He and his five siblings were sent to Bedales School for a progressive English education.After six years at Bedales, he entered King’s College,...
  
  , Hungarian
  Hungary
  Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
  
   poet (1912)
• F. L. Lucas
  F. L. Lucas
  Frank Laurence Lucas was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge....
  
  , writer and critic (1914)
• Raymond Mortimer
  Raymond Mortimer
  Charles Raymond Mortimer Bell , who wrote under the name Raymond Mortimer, was a British writer, known mostly as a critic and literary editor....
  
  , art critic, journalist, editor of the New Statesman
• Lionel Penrose
  Lionel Penrose
  Lionel Sharples Penrose, FRS was a British psychiatrist, medical geneticist, mathematician and chess theorist, who carried out pioneering work on the genetics of mental retardation. He was educated at the Quaker Leighton Park School and St...
  
   (1920)
• R. B. Braithwaite
  R. B. Braithwaite
  Richard Bevan Braithwaite was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. He was a lecturer in moral science at the University of Cambridge from 1934 to 1953, then Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy there from 1953 to 1967...
  
  , philosopher (1921)
• Frank P. Ramsey
  Frank P. Ramsey
  Frank Plumpton Ramsey was a British mathematician who, in addition to mathematics, made significant and precocious contributions in philosophy and economics before his death at the age of 26...
  
  , philosopher (1921)
• Dadie Rylands
  Dadie Rylands
  George Humphrey Wolferstan Rylands CH CBE , known as Dadie Rylands, was a British literary scholar and theatre director. Educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, he was a Fellow of King's from 1927 until his death.As well as being one of the world's leading Shakespeare scholars, he...
  
   (1922)
• Dennis Robertson, economist (1926)
• Dennis Proctor, classicist; later Sir Dennis Proctor; Permanent Secretary, UK Ministry of Power. (1927)
• Anthony Blunt
  Anthony Blunt
  Anthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...
  
  , art adviser to the Queen, MI5 officer, KGB spy (1927)
• Julian Bell
  Julian Bell
  Julian Heward Bell was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell . The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother, and the writer and painter Angelica Garnett is his half-sister...
  
  , poet (1928)
• Hugh Sykes Davies
  Hugh Sykes Davies
  Hugh Sykes Davies was an English poet, novelist and communist who was one of a small group of 1930s British surrealists.Davies was born in Yorkshire to a Methodist minister and his wife. He went to Kingswood School, Bath and studied at Cambridge, where he co-edited a student magazine called...
  
   (1932)
• Guy Burgess
  Guy Burgess
  Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
  
  , MI6 officer, KGB spy (1932)
• Lewis Daly, anthropologist implicated in Cambridge Spy Ring (1933)
• William Grey Walter
  William Grey Walter
  W. Grey Walter was a neurophysiologist and robotician.-Overview:Walter was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1910. His ancestry was German/British on his father's side, and American/British on his mother's side. He was brought to England in 1915, and educated at Westminster School and afterwards...
  
   (1933)
• Victor Rothschild, financier, member of the House of Lords (1933)
• D. G. Champernowne
  D. G. Champernowne
  David Gawen Champernowne was an English economist and mathematician.After academic work at Cambridge and the London School of Economics, he worked at the London School of Economics and Cambridge University...
  
   (1934)
• Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
  Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
  Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, OM, KBE, PRS was a British physiologist and biophysicist, who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles....
  
   (1935)
• Michael Whitney Straight
  Michael Whitney Straight
  Michael Whitney Straight, was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.-Biography:...
  
  , American magazine publisher, member of the Whitney family
  Whitney family
  The Whitney family is an American family notable for their social prominence, wealth, business enterprises and philanthropy, founded by John Whitney who came from London, England to Watertown, Massachusetts in 1635.-Rise to prominence:...
  
  , Presidential speechwriter (1936)
• Derek Prince
  Derek Prince
  Peter Derek Vaughan Prince was an international Bible teacher whose daily radio programme Derek Prince Legacy Radio broadcasts to half the population of the world in various languages...
  
   (1938)
• Peter Shore
  Peter Shore
  Peter David Shore, Baron Shore of Stepney PC was a British Labour politician and former Cabinet Minister, noted in part for his opposition to the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community. His idiosyncratic left-wing nationalism led to comparison with the French politician...
  
  , Labour politician (1947)
• Robin Gandy
  Robin Gandy
  Robin Oliver Gandy was a British mathematician and logician.He was a friend, student, and associate of Alan Turing, having been supervised by Turing during his PhD at the University of Cambridge , where they worked together.Educated at Abbotsholme, Robin Gandy took two years of the Mathematical...
  
  , mathematician (1947)
• Noel Annan
  Noel Annan
  Noel Gilroy Annan, Baron Annan, OBE was a British military intelligence officer, author, and academic. During his military career, he rose to the rank of Colonel and was appointed OBE...
  
  , intelligence officer, provost of King's College, Cambridge, provost of University College, London, vice-chancellor of the University of London, member of the House of Lords (1948)
• Harry Gordon Johnson
  Harry Gordon Johnson
  Harry Gordon Johnson was a Canadian economist who studied topics such as International trade and International finance.He was born on 26 May 1923 in Toronto, Canada, the elder son of two children of Henry Herbert Johnson, newspaperman and later secretary of the Liberal Party of Ontario, and his...
  
   (1951)
• Eric Hobsbawm
  Eric Hobsbawm
  Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
  
  , historian
• Jonathan Miller
  Jonathan Miller
  Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...
  
  , knighted; physician, comic, member of Beyond the Fringe
  Beyond the Fringe
  Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller. It played in London's West End and then on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s, and is widely regarded as seminal to the rise of satire in 1960s Britain.-The...
  
  , theatre and film director (~1957)
• Anthony Kelly, headmaster, professor of education, author (1979) [Anthony Elliott-Kelly]
• Quentin Skinner
  Quentin Skinner
  Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner is the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London.-Biography:...
  
  , historian of political philosophy
• Amartya Sen
  Amartya Sen
  Amartya Sen, CH is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members...
  
  , Nobel prize winning economist and philosopher
• James Mirrlees
  James Mirrlees
  Sir James Alexander Mirrlees is a Scottish economist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was knighted in 1998....
  
  , Nobel prize winning economist
• Andrew Browning, received the lowest Political Thought grade of any Apostle
• George Ulmann,
• Geoffrey Lloyd
  G. E. R. Lloyd
  Sir Geoffrey Ernest Richard Lloyd is a historian of Ancient Science and Medicine at the University of Cambridge. He is the Senior Scholar in Residence at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, England.- Early life :...
  
  , emeritus professor of classics at Cambridge; Master of Darwin College, Cambridge
  Darwin College, Cambridge
  Darwin College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.Founded in 1964, Darwin was Cambridge University's first graduate-only college, and also the first to admit both men and women. The college is named after the family of one of the university's most famous graduates, Charles Darwin...
  
  
• Partha Dasgupta
  Partha Dasgupta
  Professor Sir Partha Sarathi Dasgupta, FRS, FBA , is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge; Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Professor of Environmental and Development Economics at the...
  
  , emeritus Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at St John's College, Cambridge
  St John's College, Cambridge
  St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
  
  

Appearances in literature

• Avenging Angel, a murder mystery by the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah
  Kwame Anthony Appiah
  Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Ghanaian-British-American philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up in Ghana and earned a Ph.D. at Cambridge...
  
  
• The Indian Clerk
  The Indian Clerk
  The Indian Clerk is a novel by David Leavitt, published in 2007. It is inspired by the career of the self-taught mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, as seen mainly through the eyes of his mentor and collaborator G.H. Hardy, a British mathematics professor at Cambridge University...
  
  by David Leavitt
  David Leavitt
  David Leavitt is an American novelist.-Biography:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Leavitt is a graduate of Yale University. and a professor at the University of Florida...
  
  
• The Longest Journey
  The Longest Journey (novel)
  The Longest Journey is a bildungsroman by E. M. Forster.-Plot summary:Rickie Elliot is a student at early 20th century Cambridge, a university that seems like paradise to him, amongst bright if cynical companions, when he receives a visit from two friends, an engaged young woman, Agnes Pembroke,...
  
  by E. M. Forster
  E. M. Forster
  Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
  
  
• The Children's Book
  The Children's Book
  The Children's Book is a 2009 novel by British writer A.S. Byatt. It follows the adventures of several inter-related families, adults and children, from 1895 through World War I. Loosely based upon the life of children's writer E. Nesbit there are secrets slowly revealed that show that the...
  
  by A. S. Byatt
  A. S. Byatt
  Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...
  
  
• The Stranger's Child
  The Stranger's Child
  The Stranger's Child is the fifth novel by Alan Hollinghurst, published in June 2011. The book tells the story of a minor poet, Cecil Valance, who is killed in the First World War. In 1913 he visits a Cambridge friend, George Sawle, at the latter's home in Stanmore, Middlesex...
  
  by Alan Hollinghurst
  Alan Hollinghurst
  Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...