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and spectators and there is a steady procession of punts up and down the Cam, some drifting slowly and lazily, others poled by

energetic young men determined to show off their skill.

Meanwhile the colleges are preparing feverishly for the various events in which May Week culminates. The most important of

these are the May Balls for which some girls plot years in advance to get invitations and the May Races.

Rowing plays a very important part in Cambridge life, and no less than 128 crews of eight compete in the "Mays", which are rowed

over a period of four days.

Music and drama also have a part to play in the festivity. Nearly every college in the University (and there are over twenty of them)

holds a May Week Concert; at Trinity for example, there is a concert of Madrigals at which the performers and most of the audience sit

in punts at dusk beneath the willows. Many of the colleges present a play in the open air. At Corpus Christy College the set ting is the

medieval courtyard in which Christopher Marlowe lived over 400 years ago, at Queens, a Tudor Court.

At the Art theatre, the "Footlights", a famous University club which specializes in revue, puts on its annual show. There is also a

concert in King's College Chapel, but it is almost impossible for the casual visitor to get tickets for this.

The climax of May Week and for many undergraduates the final event of their university life, is the spate of college May Balls when

the river is lit up with coloured lights and flaming torches, braziers glow in the gardens, marquees are erected in flood lit courts, ball -

room orchestras compete for dancers with string bands and pop groups and punts glide romantically down the river. And in the silver

light of dawn couples in evening dress stroll leisurely, perhaps rather dreamily through the Backs and the narrow deserted streets,

until it is time to punt upstream through the meadows to breakfast at Granchester or some other equally attractive spot.

(From "Mozaika", No. 6, 1969)

Joseph Mallord William Turner

This English painter and engraver was born in London on April 23, 1775. After a sporadic elementary education Turner devoted

himself to the study of art and entered the Royal Academy schools in 1789. He was elected a member of the Academy in 1802, and,

as a teacher from 1808 of an Academy course in perspective, he exerted a powerful influence on the development of English

landscape engraving. He travelled a great deal, especially in Italy, and found inspiration for many of his later paintings in Venice. His

ardent admirer, John Ruskin, devoted some of the most eloquent passages of "Modern Painters" to a description of his work. Trained

by the sound architectural draughtsman and topographical artist Thomas Malton, Jr., and developing under the influence of the great

English seventeenth century landscapists, Turner extended English topographical painting beyond the antiquarian and reporting limits,

transforming it into a Romantic expression of his own feelings. Graphically this took form most clearly in his hundreds of water-