Lord Chris Smith, Labour MP for Islington South & Finsbury from 1983 to 2005; Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 1997 to 2001; now elected as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.   Chris’s PhD as a postgraduate student was on the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. 

He was a member of the Environment Select Committee in his first term in Parliament; he was Shadow Secretary of State for Environmental Protection for two years in the Shadow Cabinet; and he was Chairman of the Environment Agency from 2008 to 2014. 

A keen hillwalker, he has climbed all the Scottish “Munros” and has been President of the Ramblers’ Association.