History finalists prepare at annual reading party

Merton history finalists and their tutors have been in Cornwall this week for their annual reading party. The first history reading party was held at Salcombe in 1953; since 1986, its venue has been Treharrock, a Georgian house near Port Isaac.

The reading party helps undergraduates to prepare for finals by reading and discussing recently-published history books. Among this year’s picks were Anthony Pagden’s The Enlightenment and Why it Still Matters, Geoffrey Parker’s Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, and Why Can the Dead do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation by Robert Bartlett. Suitably local colour was provided by Guy Halsall’s Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages.

Away from the seminar room, this year’s diversions included trips to Arthur’s Tintagel and Rick Stein’s Padstow, a yomp over Bodmin Moor with retired Merton tutor Philip Waller, and the annual table tennis contest between Dr Gunn’s team and the finalists, who chalked up a rare victory over their tutor.