Zuleika in Cambridge

“...but here was Zuleika face to face for the first time with a Cambridge undergraduate; and undergraduates, she assumed (as Dr Johnson assumed of the waters of the sea), were much the same everywhere. She hoped that the young man would not fall in love with her too violently before she had had her lunch.”

In 1911’s Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm introduced us to the stunningly attractive and exotic young conjurer, describing the fatally dramatic events occasioned by her arrival in Oxford. Thirty years later S. C. Roberts picked up Zuleika’s tale and invited us to accompany her as she set out to explore Cambridge’s collegiate landscape in this short, piquant and hilarious sequel. 

Sir Sydney Castle Roberts (1887–1966) was a well-known and popular figure around Cambridge throughout his life. Secretary of Cambridge University Press from 1922 to 1948, he was Master of Pembroke College from 1948 to 1958 and Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1949 to 1951.