In the 1950s, many of the women of Cambridge lived lives of great hardship, but every day their work as servants in the colleges took them into an extraordinarily privileged world. Known as 'bedders' (short for 'bedmakers'), they often became close to their charges: mothering them, covering up for them, sometimes even falling in love with 'their boys'. Revealing their stories for the first time, this book is a poignant account of these remarkable...

Cambridge, 1583. About to graduate from Corpus Christi, Kit Marlowe spends his days studying Virgil and Aristotle, and his nights carousing in the Blue Boar with his friends. But when one of them is discovered lying dead in his King's College room, Marlowe refuses to accept the official verdict of suicide.