Cambridge’s King’s College Chapel is no place for solar panels

If Cambridge colleges were entitled to register protected characteristics, there is no doubt what they would be in the case of King’s College. Announcing the election of Dr Gillian Tett (currently at the FT) as the next Provost, the current Provost of King’s, Mike Proctor, has described the college as ‘this vibrant and forward-looking institution’.

For at least a century its members have taken pride in its left-wing credentials. Whether Ho Chi Minh ever read the telegrams of support sent to him by the King’s College Students’ Union at the height of the Vietnam War is very doubtful, but at least they made the college’s Marxist student leaders feel important. And fifty years ago Edmund Leach, the atheist Provost of King’s, was muttering that King’s College Chapel should be hived off as a separate institution. It makes a dent in this rich college’s finances, but less so now that a gift shop full of gewgaws and a hefty admission fee of £11 (as much as £8.50