Simon Pulleyn, a longstanding Friend of the Trust, recently drew our attention to a 1985 documentary, Queens’: A Cambridge College, in which the Trust and its first Chair, Sir Harold Bailey, appear in Episode 7, ‘Fellowship’.
Two research students visit Sir Harold at the Trust. They are shown around his library in the Iran Room and given a taste of the Pahlavi Zoroastrian scripture, the Bundahišn. As he tells the students, he began work on that edition of the Bundahišn in 1933 but stopped and only resumed his work on it in the mid-1980s. The students are then shown having tea with Sir Harold and his fellow founding trustees Bridget and Raymond Allchin.
This charming four minutes of film not only conveys the breadth and depth of Sir Harold’s interest in Iranian and countless other languages, but also offers an intimate snapshot of his character and the Trust in its early days at 23 Brooklands Avenue. Visitors to the Trust today will no doubt notice how much smarter the library looks now, while also appreciating that the tradition of tea, cake and convivial conversation endures.
This section of the documentary begins at 20 minutes 22 seconds into Episode 7 (below). All episodes of the documentary are available on the Cambridge College Videos YouTube channel: @cambridgecollegevideos4192.