A new and exciting year
 Like the remark before the disastrous wedding speech in Four Weddings and a Funeral “There is something for everyone.â€
Lectures, Welcome Party, Book launch, Dinners, Debate, Berlin Cabaret, Sport, Carols, Château Visit, Music, Garden Party, Photographic Exhibition, Paris Walks, and a mysterious Escape!
The full details will follow; this is just an appetizer for the events being planned by the Cambridge Society of Paris for the months to come.
First, in order of timing, four events in rapid succession during the remaining two weeks of this month: Lecture by George Yipp (Magdalene) Thursday 13th September; Welcome Party, Tuesday 18th September; Sebastian Faulks Embassy Book Launch, Monday 24th September; Lecture on Soren Kierkgaard (fore-runner to Jean Paul Sartre), Wednesday 26th September.
We organise the Welcome Party to congratulate students from Paris about to start their studies at Cambridge. It is for new students and all members of the Cambridge Society of Paris. Fascinating for each to meet and for the new students to hear alumni memories of Cambridge. You are highly encouraged to attend.
And what a wonderful bonus, given by the Embassy and Sebastian Faulks, fifty places for members of the Cambridge Society of Paris to attend the launch of Sebastian Faulks’s latest book, Paris Echo, at the Embassy, the evening of Monday 24th September. “Paris as you have never seen it before, every building holds an echo of an unacknowledged past, the shadows of Vichy and Algeria.†This event is a stunner and the (free) tickets will go very fast indeed.
The new Cambridge year brings the start of our two ambitious and important projects: “The Cambridge Cutting Edge Lectures†and “Glory Days of Paris.†The first will be ongoing, two lectures a year, in conjunction with heavyweight Paris based scientific institutions. The second, a cycle of five lectures on the art, literature, jazz, philosophy, and intellectual hedonism of Les Années Folles, an epoque when Paris was at the centre of the artistic world. For the moment, we are keeping the details tantalisingly secret… except just to say that the first two speakers for the Cutting Edge Lectures are the President of the Royal Society and Professor Sir Roger Penrose. Can’t do better than that!
As a glorious counterpoint, on 23rd or 24th November, by way of our Christmas Party, Berlin Cabaret. Exotic, original, opera operetta and Kurt Weil as never before, a stunning dinner performance by the bewigged, bejewelled and bewitching Claudia Roick and Nicole Tschaikin.
Edward Archer is kindly organising his much-loved Christmas Carols at the Hôtel Paiva, and the Corpus Christi choir will be performing for us in the Spring.
With new committee member David Sayers, we are working on the scope for a photographic exhibition and talk by the wonderfully eccentric American photographer of the world’s celebrities (including Bianca Jagger on horseback), Rose Hartman.
One of the great successes last year was the guided visit to Christies organised by Valérie Didier and I am delighted to say that this has been offered again for the current year.
George Young will, we hope, conduct stage two of his walk around the Marais and, in addition, we are planning one or two guided walks around Paris showing Paris as you have never seen it before.
But this is not all, we have some further gems that we hope to reveal ere long, as well as traditional highlights including the Annual Dinner and the Embassy Garden Party.
Finally, as a complete departure, fun for all, young and old, the new craze sweeping Paris and Barcelona: enter into a hidden room in a curious domain. A mystery starts to unfold. You are trapped. You can only escape by using your wits, your skill, your ingenuity. Teams of up to five. I have tried it… amazing!
Our membership has doubled over the past eighteen months. Very good indeed, and I hope that there are events here that will appeal to all. I look forward enormously to meeting you at as many events as you can manage.
With very best wishes,
Andrew Lyndon-Skeggs
President, Cambridge Society of Paris
12th September 2018
