The First 40 Presidents of Queens' College Cambridge

Queens' College, part of the University of Cambridge, was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou, wife of the inept and ill-fated Henry VI. The first of its 40 Presidents to date was Andrew Doket, an ambitious Catholic priest, while the latest, the eminent economist Dr. Mohamed El-Erian, was installed in 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic.

This account traces the history of the College through the lives and times of each of the 40 Presidents in chronological order. Their varied careers, (which encompass the martyrdom of Saint John Fisher, incarceration in a prison ship in the Civil War and preaching at the burning of heretics on Cathedral Green at Ely), illustrate the interactions between the academic community and the social, religious, cultural and political life in Britain, over five and a half centuries.

Auteur

Jonathan Hudson Dowson was born in Leeds in 1942 and attended The Leys School, Cambridge, Queens' College, Cambridge and St Thomas' Medical School, London. He was married to Lynn Susan Dothie in 1965. He moved to Edinburgh in 1967 for post-graduate training. in Psychiatry. Subsequently, he was a Lecturer in Anatomy at Edinburgh during 1969-72 and was awarded a PhD in neurohistochemistry. He returned to clinical work as a Lecturer in Psychiatry in Edinburgh, before moving to Swindon as a Consultant Psychiatrist with the Wessex Health Authority. In 1977 he was appointed Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist and University Lecturer in Psychiatry at Cambridge University. He was awarded an MD at Cambridge in 1985. His research interests have included neuronal lipopigment in ageing and dementia, personality disorders and adult attention-deficit disorder. He retired in 2009. He and Lynn have three children and six grandchildren. He has been a Fellow- Commoner of Queens' College, since 1985.