Until now, it’s perhaps been most popularly associated with one of the opening scenes from Chariots Of Fire, the 1981 Oscar-winning film starring Nigel Havers and Ben Cross as two undergraduate athletes – one an aristocrat; the other, the son of a Jewish immigrant – who belt 371 yards around its Great Court while the clock strikes 12.
But no amount of cinematic lustre can disguise the moral failure which seemingly now characterises Trinity College, Cambridge – according to the Earl of Balfour, who watched in disgust and disbelief last week as Trinity’s portrait of his great-great uncle, Arthur Balfour, the former prime minister, was repeatedly slashed and sprayed with paint by a ‘pro-Palestine protester’.
Condemning the attack as ‘wanton vandalism’, the Earl is even more revolted by what he describes as the ‘supine’ and ‘woke’ response by Trinity.
‘The college said it was offering support to anyone ‘affected’ – but shouldn’t the priority be to leave no stone unturned to find the perpetrators?’ asks Balfour, 75.
He’s similarly dumbfounded by what he calls the ‘plain ignorance of the history of the Middle East among these extremists’ who attempted to justify the attack by claiming that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 ‘began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine‘.
The Earl patiently reiterates the truth. ‘The Declaration addressed a refugee problem but was very clear about the expected rights of existing residents,’ he tells me. ‘To claim that [it] gave away Palestine is a calumny.’
His great-great uncle would have been appalled, he adds, by extremist attempts to ensure that ‘the Jews – one of the three Abrahamic faiths – have no rights to be in Palestine’.
Trinity declines to respond to requests for comment – which, understandably, antagonises Lord Balfour even more. ‘Not to stick up for him is shameful,’ he tells me.
But eloquent support comes from The de Laszlo Archive Trust, which preserves the immense legacy of Philip de Laszlo, whose portrait of Arthur Balfour has been desecrated.
‘De Laszlo said of himself, “A portrait painter has a great responsibility – to leave to future generations an historical document of his times”. The violent destruction of Lord Balfour’s portrait seeks to wipe away history.’