Captured on film: footage of Cambridge student life during WWII

Reminders of wartime can be seen in the background or looming overhead. Sandbags are deployed, evacuation drills are underway, cars are rare due to petrol rationing and RAF training planes soar in the skies above.

Shot by Malcolm Shaw of St John’s College in the early 1940s, the film gives a glimpse into what it was like to study and socialise while RAF training aircraft circled overhead and College lawns were given over to vegetables as part of the ‘dig for victory’ campaign.

The amateur film depicts typical scenes of Cambridge student life, with groups of undergraduates punting, walking to lectures and playing rugby. However, reminders of wartime can be seen in the background or looming overhead. Sandbags are deployed at St John’s, evacuation drills are underway, cars are rare due to petrol rationing and RAF training planes soar in the skies above. Malcolm Shaw, providing narration in 1989 to overlay the originally silent film, declared that ‘the planes were ever-present at this time of the war.’

The scenes recorded in this film reveal a Cambridge which seems largely unaffected by the war, though many of Shaw’s peers would soon take part in the conflict. Tracy Wilkinson, St John’s College Archivist, said ‘What we see in Shaw's film is the lighter side of College life. Despite his time at St John's coinciding with the outbreak of war, the sense of there still being time for leisure is evident.’

The film was given to the College following the death of Malcolm Shaw in 2003, where it will be preserved for future generations of researchers. It has now been made available online as part of a wider digitisation project in the Archives following a grant from the East of England Research Council.


Watch the film and read the full story


Image: An RAF training plane in the skies over Cambridge during the early days of World War II. The image is taken from Malcolm Shaw's film.

Credit: Malcolm Shaw and the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge


Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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