Yesterday, we went to a memorial event in Lauderdale House for Chris Chapman, who arrived at King’s College, Cambridge in October 1973 as a late vocation undergraduate – a painter with film star good looks, who had left school without many qualifications to study at Hornsey School of Art in 1960.

In the summer of 1975, we spent a month staying in a monastery just outside Siena in order to study works of art for our special subject paper on ‘Painting in Italy 1300-1350’, so had a happy time hitch-hiking to Arezzo, Assisi, Perugia and Pienza, looking at paintings, eating evening meals in the refectory of the monastery, struggling with our inadequate Italian and watching the Palio.

It was clear from the speeches that everyone remembered him as a glamorous figure, extremely keen on clothes (those exceptionally wide trousers and carefully pressed shirts), teaching life drawing and walking the streets of Cambridge with his equally glamorous girlfriend of the time, Harriet, who sadly wasn’t able to be there.

Here we all are in the summer of 1976 on the banks of the River Cam. Christopher is third from the left (photo courtesy of Jo Hugh-Jones):-