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[Clare College]

One of the most impressively anonymous colleges, in StuartFraser's experience - how many people who live away from the CambridgeAura have heard of Clare? Even within Cambridge, it's nicely hidden away behind KingsCollege and the legions of tourists pass it by - unless they somehow got lost trying to get into KingsCollege/Chapel?, anyway. Not famous for anything amongst the students, either...

Music, I think of.  And Diplomacy? in Clare Buttery, but that's just showing me age...  --AC
Quite. Diplomacy? is run in the Chetwynd room at KingsCollege now....
Music is Clare's big thing.  Particularly their world-famous chapel choir.  No, [seriously].  Put it this way - a letter addressed to "Tim Brown, Cambridge" (their director of music) arrived just fine!

Yes; if you're not in the choir you're basically Cam-scum. Whether the choir deserve such adulation is debatable; they always sound quite nice, I suppose, if you like that kind of thing, but their aesthetic value in visual terms has waxed and waned over the years.

Also played a big part in losing the Empire. Cornwallis, who could have crushed the American Revolution at Long Island had he pressed on with his assault rather than giving the rebels time to pull off their little Dunkirk, was a Clare man. So Clare is pretty much directly responsible for George Bush. --ChiarkPerson

StuartFraser disagrees, strongly. Given the number of times other than Long Island the American revolt could have foundered and didn't:
* If the Royal Navy had charts of the Mystic, the continental army would have been crushed at Bunker Hill
* If a hurricane on March 5, 1776 had not forced Washington to call off an assault with his best troops on fortifications he later described as "impregnable" at Boston.
* If Washington's reckless attacks on Trenton or Princeton had failed, the revolution would have ended there and then.
* If Carelton had not been ridiculously cautious at Ticonderega, the British would have had, by the time the campaigning season started in 1777, a position in Albany which essentially outflanked the Continentals merely through existing.
* If Burgoyne and Howe had co-operated (which they would have done, had Howe an ounce of sense or been able to stand Burgoyne), the Northern States would have fallen in 1777 and the Northern army been crushed. At very least, the Canadian border would have been 300 miles further south.
* If Captain Ferguson had killed General Washington at Brandywine in 1777, the revolution would almost certainly have shaken itself apart. No-one else could command the armies; nobody was as trusted by the people, as inspirational a leader or as skilled a commander.
* If the "Conway Cabal" to replace Washington with Gates had suceeded (highly unlikely, admittedly), then after Camden, the odds are that command would have been given to Benedict Arnold; who at this point was trying to betray the revolt
* If the British had attacked Newport as they had originally planned as the French expeditionary force arrived, a French defeat would almost certainly have knocked France out of the war (as a side effect, it might have prevented the French revolution, as well).
* If Tarleton had rested his troops before the cowpens, Nathaniel Greene's brilliant campaign in the South could never have happened (no army = no campaign, usually).
* If one of the Royal Navy's only two defeats in a fleet action (the other was in 1941) had not been at Cheasapeake Bay, Yorktown could never have fallen.
* If Washington had failed to head the Newburgh conspiracy off at the pass, the hitherto "won" war would have started up again...
Washington himself put the American success down to "divine providence". Given the words of the great man, I think it's a bit harsh to blame ClareCollege. --SF



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