¹ A novel by the Italian film director Fabio Carpi (b. 1925).

¹ German edition 1975; published in English as Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1976).

² ‘It’s enough to swap words with objects, the real with the imaginary.’

¹ Perhaps because of his near-blindness; perhaps because of low spirits.

² Sir John Kendrew (1917–97), molecular biologist, Fellow of Peterhouse 1947–75 and President of St John’s College, Oxford, 1981–7.

¹ Philip Pattenden (b. 1950), Classics Fellow of Peterhouse since 1976.

² Richard Skaer (b. 1936), Fellow of Peterhouse and Tutor in Biology 1961–2004.

³ The parliamentary commission to demolish monuments of superstition in Cambridge, led by William Dowsing, got to work in Peterhouse in December 1643.

⁴ During the 1630s the Dutchman Abraham van Linge (fl. 1625–41) painted beautiful windows in Christ Church which were smashed by the Puritans. Some of his work survives there.

⁵ An article by David Watkin in the Peterhouse Annual Record for 1998–9 mentions the stained glass, though without identifying the subject as the washing of Peter’s feet.

⁶ Simon Schama (b. 1945), who then held a Harvard history chair. Perutz had mentioned in a letter dated 11 November 1988 that his daughter had been reading and enjoying Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987), and had asked him if he knew Schama.

⁷ Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813 (1977).

¹ Is Science Necessary? Essays on Science and Society (1989). T-R picked it as one of his ‘Books of the Year’ in The Telegraph. Reviewing the book in The Spectator, T-R commented of Perutz: ‘He makes the most difficult subjects intelligible and writes with the warmth, humanity, and broad culture which has always characterized the great men of science.’