Bribes ain’t what they used to be

150 years of Cambridge examinations: no improvement in examiner remuneration

Cambridge Assessment has garnered useful publicity for its 150th anniversary by putting together an exhibition of quaint gems from the archives. This featured on Radio 4’s Learning Curve, including a letter from a Mr A Kershaw of Morecambe who, in 1910, offered the Secretary of the Syndicate, John Neville Keynes, (father of the economist) and his wife ‘a holiday in Paris’ if his daughter’s fail grade could be found to have been ‘a mistake’ (see page 24 of the online materials for the original). No such largesse in these mean-spirited times; the best I’ve had recently is the odd chuckle over ‘youthamisms’ in Shakespeare, where Claudius, in an act of ‘fartricide’, seized the ‘thrown’ from Old Hamlet.