It is nearly 3 years since the US and the UK withdrew from Afghanistan. A key figure in the evacuation was the UK’s last ambassador to Afghanistan, Laurie Bristow – now president of Hughes Hall, Cambridge. Here he talks about his new book Kabul: Final Call: The Inside Story of the Withdrawal from Afghanistan, August 2021 and the lessons we should learn.
Having survived the civil war in Afghanistan, alumnus Waheed Arian arrived alone in the UK aged 15. He went on to study medicine at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Today he’s using smartphones to save lives in war zones.
A stolen chest of letters – penned by an army wife to her husband on the battlefields of the Second World War – has helped a Cambridge academic and biographer trace the history of the women behind the men in uniform.
Dr David Gosling (Faculty of Divinity) discusses his time on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, his encounters with the Taliban and why education is the best weapon against terrorism.
Professor Simon Redfern (Department of Earth Sciences) discusses the devastating earthquake that struck Afghanistan on October 26 and the geological triggers that caused it.
A Cambridge academic was given unprecedented access to the military hospital at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, to study the teamwork of the combat surgeons. The unique photographs he took reveal the realities of life and death in the operating theatre of modern war.
Clare Holtham (1948-2010) had a huge enthusiasm for learning. After a troubled childhood, which led to a spell of homelessness, she became an intrepid traveller and independent-minded student at Newnham College, Cambridge. A book of Clare’s poems called The Road from Herat, launched today at Newnham, reflects a life lived to the full. It included working on the buses and a rapid marriage to an Uzbek chieftain.
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