Ars longa, vita brevis

Students from Kings College gather beside the chapel to process to the Senate House and graduate.

My stepson amongst them (brag, brag)/i]. He has been wholly state-educated in - I might say - that very same three-tier system that Suffolk County Council's recent administrations have been wanting to abolish, telling us they were failing our young people.

Right.

He has just achieved a double first in Philisophy. Hard to see how he could have bettered this .

I digress).

Mighty though their intellects might be, the graduands are put in their place by the sheer size of the glorious chapel behind them. 94 feet high and made of golden stone in the Perpendicular Gothic style, it took the best part of 100 years to complete and the reigns of seven kings, right throughout the Wars of the Roses. Hence its name.

Inside is the largest fan vault in the world.

It is not just kings who have come and gone: the college has been home to intellects as varied as Robert Walpole, Alan Turing, Rupert Brooke, E.M. Forster - not to mention six Nobel prizewinners - everyone arriving, and working and moving on, overseen by the unchanging chapel.

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?