University Of Cambridge Alumni

"Richard’s will was sovereign, and yet it could not be trusted not to change. He had demonstrated that he would erase history, change the statutes of the realm, rather than remit his desires."

"Once again, the viewer is made to recognize the sheer glory of kingship, its otherworldly status, and Richard’s distance from his subjects. This majesty is revealed by the actual events of Richard’s life and death to have been empty at its heart."

"Richard understood his own reign through the distorting lens of the court he made for himself; he could not understand why the regality he regarded as his right was denied to him on the broader stage."

"And then the English Ministrels blew aloud their Trumpets, and sounded their Pipes, and other Instruments of Martial Musick, and Marched furiously to meet the Scots. Now to each Battail of English, were two Wings of chosen Archers, who shot this day so thick, and so home, that the Scots could by no means maintain their Order: So that the Englishmen of Arms and Footmen enter'd in among them, and beat them down by Heaps. Yet still the Scots fought valiantly; and while the Lord Archibald Douglas liv'd, kept the Field with great Courage; tho' much to their Loss: But when they saw him struck thro' the Body with a Spear, they began to flee for safeguard of their Lives, tho' to very little purpose. For when the Scotch Valets and Pages saw the Discomfiture, they ran away upon the Spur, with their Masters' Horses to save themselves, taking no Care for their Masters. But when the English men of Arms saw that, they leap'd on their Horses, and follow'd the Chace with great Fury; then were the Scotch men trodden down on all sides, their display'd Banners fell'd to the Ground, all torn and hack'd in pieces; and many a good Habergeon bathed in the Owners' Blood. Yet frequently did the Scots gather together in Companies to dispute the point with their Pursuers; but still they were discomfited. And thus, says my Author (M.S. vet. Ang. in Bibl. C.C.C. c. 224), it befell as God would, that the Scots had that day no more Power nor Might against the English, than twenty Sheep would have against five Wolves."

"Although by about 1500 several strong national states had emerged in Europe, they remained greatly dependent on their monarchs. This kind of personalized power is at the heart of summitry. One of the most famous encounters took place on the so-called Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520, bringing together Henry VIII of England and François I of France. The young English monarch, whose titles still included "King of France," had resumed the old struggle in 1512. But his advisor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey secured a truce and then arranged a summit to consummate an enduring peace. It took place on the edge of Calais, the last English enclave in France, in a shallow dip known as the Val d’Or. Both sides of the valley were carefully reshaped to ensure that neither party enjoyed a height advantage. A special pavilion was constructed for the meeting and festivities, surrounded by thousands of tents and a three-hundred-foot-square timber castle for the rest of those attending. Henry’s entourage alone numbered more than five thousand, while the French crown needed ten years to pay off its share of the cost. [...] At the appointed hour on June 7, 1520, the Feast of Corpus Christi, the two monarchs with their retinues in full battle array appeared on the opposite sides of the valley. There was a moment of tense silence—each side feared an ambush by the other. Then the two kings spurred their horses forward to the appointed place marked by a spear in the ground and embraced. The ice was broken. They dismounted and went into the pavilion arm in arm to talk. Then began nearly two weeks of jousting, feasting and dancing that culminated in a High Mass in the open air. Choirs from England and France accompanied the mass and there was a sermon on the virtues of peace. In both choreography and cost, the Field of the Cloth of Gold resembles contemporary summits. In a further similarity, style was more important than substance: by 1521 the two countries were at war again. In many ways they were natural rivals, whereas Henry was bound—by marriage and interest—to France’s enemy Charles V, king of Spain. Both before and after the Cloth of Gold Henry met Charles for discussions of much greater diplomatic magnitude. And although Wolsey hoped the meeting of the British and French elites might build bridges, this soon proved an illusion. As the Cloth of Gold demonstrated, egos were everything in these summits, with each side alert to any hint of advantage gained summits by the other. Commines was implacably opposed to such meetings for this very reason. It was, he said, impossible "to hinder the train and equipage of the one from being finer and more magnificent than the other, which produces mockery, and nothing touches any person more sensibly than to be laughed at.""

"Unlike the French government, Britain had no formal obligations to Czechoslovakia. A cardinal axiom of British foreign policy was not to get entangled in France’s alliance system in Eastern Europe, designed to threaten a resurgent Germany with war on two fronts. However, the French coalition government led by Édouard Daladier was itself bitterly split over Czechoslovakia, with one group willing to honor France’s obligations, another favoring peace at almost any price, and Daladier shifting uneasily between them. At root, a weakened and divided France would not go to war without Britain: for much of the Czech crisis, Paris therefore followed London—its "English governess," in the words of one historian. And London, in essence, meant Neville Chamberlain, aged sixty-eight, who had succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister in May 1937."

"[A]t the time praise was showered on Chamberlain for brokering the deal. On his return from Locarno, he received a special welcome at Victoria Station and, in further similarity to Disraeli in 1878, was immediately made a Knight of the Garter. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin praised him for resolving an issue that had "so far defied the efforts of every statesman since the war." One of Baldwin’s predecessors, Lord Arthur Balfour, said that Chamberlain’s name would be "indissolubly associated” with this probable "turning point in civilisation." A few months later Chamberlain was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. For a politician who had grown up in the shadow of his famous father, "Radical Joe," it was an intoxicating apotheosis. “I am astonished and a little frightened by the completeness of my success and by its immediate recognition everywhere,” Chamberlain told his sister. On October 22, 1925, he dined alone with his younger half-brother Neville, who noted in his diary that Austen "talked almost without stopping from 8 till 11.00 on Locarno. Very naturally, perhaps, the rest of the world does not exist for him...Looking back he felt that no mistake had been made from beginning to end." Neville found it hard to conceal his envy at Austen’s success. Nor, as we shall see, did he forget it."

"It became normal to have at each of the major courts a resident "ambassador"—a word defined by the English poet and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton in a punning epigram as “a man sent to lie abroad for his country’s good.” Given the time required for travel, and the hazards en route—especially in an age of dynastic and religious warfare—permanent ambassadors offered a convenient substitute for personal summitry. And their detailed reports required the attention of specialist secretaries who oversaw foreign affairs, such as Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan London or Antonio Perez at the court of Philip III. Day-to-day diplomacy tended to slip out of the hands of rulers."

"In the heyday of the Byzantine Empire its rulers tried to manage affairs from Constantinople, either bringing foreign rulers to their court or conducting negotiations by letters and by envoys who acted as the self-styled "voice of kings." In 1096 and 1097 the emperor Alexis Comnenos made a point of meeting the leaders of the First Crusade in his own palace, as did Manuel Comnenos when the Second Crusade arrived in 1147. But when Byzantium spiralled into decline in the fourteenth century, its emperors became as mobile as those of the late Roman Empire, and much less potent. Emperor Manuel II was reduced to touring the courts of Italy, France, Germany and England for help against the Ottoman Turks, handing out precious books and pieces of the supposed tunic of Christ as inducements. This was the diplomacy of desperation: Byzantium fell to the Turks in 1453, less than thirty years after Manuel’s death."

"The importance of status is vividly illustrated by perhaps the most celebrated summit in German history: the meeting at Canossa in 1077 between Pope Gregory VII and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. In German this is known as der Canossagang, the journey to Canossa; more aptly in Italian as l’umiliazione di Canossa, for it was truly a humiliation. In the Investiture Controversy—the power struggle between pope and emperor over the right to appoint bishops—Henry had renounced Gregory as pope, only to find himself excommunicated. This papal edict not only imperilled Henry’s immortal soul, it also laid him open to revolt by the German nobility. He sought a meeting with Gregory who, fearing violence, retreated to the castle of Canossa, in safe territory south of Parma. This forced the emperor to come to him. What exactly happened is shrouded in legend, but supposedly Henry arrived in the depths of winter, barefoot and in a pilgrim’s hair shirt, only to be kept waiting by Gregory for three days. When he was finally admitted to the castle on January 28, 1077, the emperor knelt before the pope and begged forgiveness. He was absolved and the two most powerful figures in Christendom then shared the Mass. The reconciliation was short-lived. After being excommunicated a second time Henry crossed the Alps with his army and replaced Gregory with an “antipope” of his own. But the events themselves matter less than the myth that grew up around them. During the German Reformation Henry was lionized as the defender of national rights and the scourge of the Catholic pope, often being dubbed “the first Protestant.” And during Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s struggle to rein in the Catholic church, he famously declared in the Reichstag on May 14, 1872: “We will not go to Canossa, neither in body nor in spirit.” He was voicing the new German Reich’s resolve to accept no outside interference in its affairs—political or religious. As a result Henry IV shivering outside the gates of Canossa became a familiar figure in late-nineteenth-century German art; the phrase “to go to Canossa” (nach Canossa gehen) entered the language as a synonym for craven surrender—almost the equivalent of "Munich" to the British and Americans."

"After Westphalia brought peace to Europe, the second half of the seventeenth century saw a further spread of resident ambassadors, with Louis XIV’s France leading the way, and French replaced Latin as the lingua franca. There was, however, still scope for summitry, for instance during Peter the Great’s tour of Western Europe in 1697–8. His meetings with William III of England helped bring Russia belatedly into the European diplomatic orbit. In due course, the czar created a "Diplomatic Chancellery" and a network of foreign embassies on the European model."

"Throughout history, security as much as status has been an obstacle to summitry. In 1419 France was in turmoil from war with the English and a power struggle provoked by the periodic insanity of King Charles VI. On September 10 the dauphin, Charles’ son, conferred on a bridge near Rouen with their archrival, John, Duke of Burgundy. Both men were well attended by guards and a barrier had been erected in the middle, with a wicket gate bolted on either side to allow passage only by mutual consent. During the conference Duke John was persuaded to come through the gate—only to be cut down by the dauphin’s bodyguard. The dauphin, inheriting the throne as Charles VII, recovered much of France from the English. When his son, Louis XI, met the Yorkist king Edward IV at Picquigny near Amiens in 1475 to conclude a peace treaty, the fate of Duke John was much in mind. The chronicler Philippe de Commines tells how this conference was held on a bridge over the Somme. Louis insisted that across the middle of the bridge and along its sides his carpenters should build "a strong wooden lattice, such as lions’ cages are made with, the hole between each bar being no wider than to thrust in a man’s arm." The two kings somehow managed to embrace between the holes and conducted their meeting in secure cordiality."

"The origins of diplomacy date back at least to the Bronze Age in the Near East. Caches of documents from the Euphrates kingdom in the mid–eighteenth century BC and from Akhenaten’s Egypt four centuries later reveal a regular exchange of envoys with neighboring states, prompted by the need for trade and the danger of war. This was hardly a fully fledged diplomatic "system." Envoys were not resident ambassadors and they were not protected by agreed rules of immunity—but it was a recognizable form of diplomacy."

"In the post-Roman West personal diplomacy was more normal, for instance when family members were vying to divide up a kingdom, as portrayed dramatically in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear. A notable example was the series of summits in Carolingian France after the death of Louis the Pious, particularly those at Verdun in 843 and Meersen in 870. The outlines of these territorial settlements were laboriously thrashed out months in advance by commissioners who surveyed the terrain and gathered data. But plenty of scope still remained for face-to-face haggling by the principals—their in-person meetings guaranteed the agreements by an exchange of oaths and sometimes of hostages. On other occasions, summits concluded carefully prepared peace agreements, as when Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III met in Venice in 1177. This conference took place on neutral territory; others, as with late Roman practice, were conducted in the borderlands. In either case, the location was chosen to ensure the status and/or security of each ruler."

"As the world closes you in, as its noises deafen you, and as its attractions draw you, try to remember always for what you have been made. You are made to serve God for ever; to see His face; and to have His name in your foreheads. With less than this you could never be satisfied, and more you cannot have."

"Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point "in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us.""

"[S]ome learned writers...have compared a Scorpion to an Epigram...because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the tayle, so the force and vertue of an Epigram is in the conclusion."

"There may have been some connection between his convalescent vow of crusade and the arrest by his orders, in May 1287, of all those enemies of the Christian faith, the Jews, in England. Their subsequent release on payment of a fine of 20,000 marks is evidence that he did not allow religion to interfere with business principles."

"So far as the popes were concerned it was Edward I’s habitual practice to become enthusiastic over crusading propositions whenever he was in want of money and thereby to obtain grants of clerical subsidies, which he promptly applied to other purposes."

"Although he must have seen that the position was serious it was impossible for him to realise the disastrous effect that the death of the Maid of Norway was to have upon the history of England. The discussion of hypothetical history is not very profitable, but it may be pointed out that if the marriage planned between Maid of Norway and Edward had been consummated the union of England and Scotland might have been anticipated by several centuries, the wearisome and disastrous wars between those two kingdoms would at least have been avoided, and also the Hundred Years’ War with France, arising out of Edward’s actual marriage with Isabel of France. Had Maid of Norway lived Bannockburn, Crécy and Agincourt would never have been fought."

"In the first place it must be borne in mind that before the extinction of its independence Wales was a geographical expression rather than a nation."

"Remarkable as was the resemblance in some ways between Edward I and his great-grandfather Henry II the difference in their attitude towards religion was as great as the difference in appearance between the tall, dark, wiry Plantagenet and the short, stout, ruddy Angevin. Henry was as nearly an agnostic as even a king dared be in the twelfth century, while Edward was a man of very sincere piety."

"That it was the king’s intention to govern the parts of Wales that were now under his control with justice and gain the goodwill of the inhabitants cannot be doubted. There is also reason to believe that he was in some considerable measure successful so far as the common people were concerned, but the chieftains and petty lords were too long accustomed to that form of license which they called liberty to accept the restraints of English law even if administered with strict impartiality, and from what we know of contemporary English officials in their own country we may feel fairly sure that cases of maladministration and oppression were not lacking."

"Faithfulness to those whom he had once admitted into the rather narrow circle of his friendship was, indeed, a mark of his character. Those whom he had once found loyal and capable as ministers, soldiers or diplomats retained, as a rule, his confidence to the end."

"The workings of the mysterious influence of heredity present few greater puzzles than the characters of the English kings. It is indeed strange that Edward I should have been the son of the pious but incapable Henry III and father of the equally incapable Edward II."

"Eleanor of Castile is the most attractive personality in the long list of English queens, her only rival being Philippa of Hainault."

"Eleanor of Provence was a kindly, narrow and commonplace woman, devout to a degree which to modern ideas would seem bigoted but was admirable in the eyes of her contemporaries, affectionate, and even devoted, to her husband, children and relations."

"The theoretical supremacy of the king in legal matters was so far practical that his prolonged absence, in Gascony, Wales or Scotland, usually coincided with the periods of greatest lawlessness."

"Had his son and successor resembled him in character and ability a despotic autocracy might have been established which would have altered the whole history of English constitutional history, and it is questionable whether we owe a greater debt to the strength of Edward I, which curbed the baronial oligarchy, or to the weakness of Edward II, which shook the power of the throne and saved England from a despotism."

"It was from the maladministration, peculation and corruption of the officials, from the Chief Justices of the Bench down to the catchpolls of the manor courts, that the people suffered rather than from the weakness or badness of the laws."

"Law, considered historically, may be divided into two branches, Theory or Legislation, and Practice or Administration."

"As a warrior his reputation was well established and well deserved, not the least important of his qualifications being that mysterious attribute known as luck, an attribute inspiring alike to the possessor and to those serving under him."

"The most famous and popular of all English saints, St. Thomas of Canterbury, could not be ignored but Edward does not seem to have shown any great affection for him and one cannot help feeling that he was too conscious of the parallel between Becket and his own troublesome archbishops to display any great devotion towards the martyr."

"While Edward I maintained a becoming magnificence of state he was in his personal tastes simple and averse to display, dressing plainly and rightly relying upon his character and personality rather than upon kingly trappings to uphold his dignity."

"No more was heard of the proposal for this extraordinary extension of popular control, but the attacks on the Treasurer, instigated by Winchelsey, were renewed a year later when Sir John de Lovetot accused him of infringements of most of the Ten Commandments and of a few other offences, such as simony, which had been overlooked by the compilers of the Decalogue. As a result Treasurer was suspended and compelled to pay a visit to the papal court, where, after he had been well fleeced, his innocence was established in June 1303. By way of showing his own zeal for the good governance of the Church the Pope at the same time authorised the slandered Treasurer to bestow benefices upon two of his nephews who had reached the mature ages of ten and twelve years respectively."

"The Prince, now at the end of his seventeenth year, had been with his father on the last Scottish campaign and had on several occasions acted as his father’s representative but seems already to have been showing signs of the frivolous and unworthy character which distinguished him in later life, and the evidence of these characteristics accumulates rapidly during the next few years even before they are exposed to the fierce light that beats upon a throne."

"The renewal and confirmation of their charters granted to many towns under Edward I, as in all other reigns, so far from being a mark of his favor may with equal justice be read as reminders to the citizens that they held their privileges by grace of the crown—a grace for the continuation of which they had to pay."

"Over the past several years, we’ve seen Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) go from nice to have to must have technology in cars."

"In cabin sensing is the natural evolution of DMS and is seeing increased demand because of its many important applications in safety as well as entertainment, comfort, wellness and beyond. Instead of just focusing on the driver, interior sensing solutions have a full view of the entire cabin. With a camera and other sensors, these systems provide human-centric insight into what’s happening in a vehicle, by detecting the state of the cabin and that of the driver and passengers in it."

"In cabin sensing is such a hot topic because it allows OEMs to not only meet regulatory and rating requirements that are on the horizon, but also sets them up to differentiate their brands in a very competitive market. Also, car manufacturers can expand on cameras, other sensors and machine learning-based algorithms that are already deployed for DMS. Building on that as a foundation, they can often, cost effectively, add advanced safety features and engaging mobility experiences to existing platforms."

"Our focus should always be on advancing automotive technologies to save lives and I love how interior sensing enables several advanced safety features. One important functionality is child and child seat detection, which helps determine if a child is left behind in a vehicle unattended. I am hopeful that this can help avoid tragic deaths due to vehicular heatstroke. And, as anyone who has driven around with kids or for that matter, pets will know, they often cause distraction, so child and pet detection can provide important inputs to promote safer driving behavior."

"I have always been very interested in the intersection of healthcare and automotive. So, I am glad to see that, for example through Euro NCAP, attention is being given to sudden sickness. What if interior sensing AI could detect driver impairment due to a medical event? For example, we already have early stage capabilities for detecting heart rate variability using computer vision, and I am eager to see these types of technologies advance so that they can actually be deployed in vehicles."

"Occupancy detection, which determines how many people are in the cabin and where they are sitting, is another interesting area of functionality. This too can help improve existing safety functionality, as it helps determine proper seat position and seat belt usage and can provide important analysis for airbag deployment."

"There are also fascinating backseat use cases around content recommendations and monetization of advertising data, even. Understanding passenger reactions and emotional engagement with music and video content can help refine content recommendations, making these more relevant to the user and their experience. Where advertising is deployed, understanding viewer engagement with that content provides OEMs and advertisers with very valuable data. I think users will be interested in opting in to that, if there is an incentive for them. Imagine a scenario where you and your friends take a rideshare to a concert and engage with advertising in the back of a car. In return, since the system knows you are taking a ride to a concert, it offers you a discount coupon for a band t-shirt or such. And, to wrap this up, a fun use case often requested by OEMS, is trip highlights where the Emotion AI detects smiles and joy, so that an interior camera can take cool pictures just at the right moment there’s a lot of fun we can add to the overall experience considering the right applications of this technology."

"I am also very interested in the experience features that in cabin sensing will enable. The Emotion AI technology that we created at Affectiva, now part of Smart Eye, also unlocks massively interesting personalization. By understanding the emotional and cognitive states of people in a vehicle we can adapt the environment to their needs in the moment. For example, if someone is getting drowsy, the lighting dims, the heating turns up and soothing music plays quietly in the background, creating a comfortable and restorative environment."

"Yeah, absolutely. I’m actually Kenyan, by the way. So I was born and raised there, which is why I do research there. But yes, I’ve been to them several times. In fact, I was just there, I was there in February. Yeah. I mean, they’re not rich people, right? This is rural Kenya. They’re pretty poor. They’re mostly growing and eating maize. That’s the main staple of the whole country. A lot of them might not eat much meat a year, maybe at Christmas."

"We can have our econ ‘hats’ on with some theory in mind, but without a deep understanding of the context and constraints in the particular environment you're working in, it's hard to design interventions that might be useful"

"Everyone has their own path to finding their passion and, for some, that may be longer than for others."

"Memoræ sacrum Joanni Still Episcopo Bathoniensi et Wellensi, Sacræ Theologia Doctori Acerrimo Christianæ Veritatis propugnatori non nienus vitæ integritate quam veria Doctrina claro qui cum Domino Diu vigilasset in Christo spe certa resurgendi obdormivit die XXVI. Februarii . Vixit annos LXIIII sedit episcopus XVI. Nathaniel Still filius primogenitus optimo patri Mœrens pietatis ergo posuit."

"It seems to me that what we have right now is the ability to build new, amazing, unprecedented tools to accomplish particular tasks: AI vision (“segment this image on a pixel by pixel basis”), reinforcement learning (“learn a policy to pick up widgets using trial and error”) and LLMs (“use your massive general knowledge to generate new text”). We do not have a coherent vision for putting these marvellous tools together into something with the flexibility and tenacity of a lifeform. We have many single-purpose parts. We do not have an architecture. This lack of a coherent framework for complete real-world agents is the first core problem in AGI today."