The Night Climbers of Cambridge is a book written under the pseudonym "Whipplesnaith" about nocturnal climbing on the colleges and town buildings of Cambridge, England, in the 1930s.
"Whipplesnaith" is a pseudonym for Noël Howard Symington. The book was originally published in October 1937 by Chatto and Windus, revised in November 1937 and reprinted in 1952 and 1953. The second edition contains a reordered selection of photographs and a missing diagram explaining the escape from the roof of the Marks and Spencer.
The book was highly sought after, especially in Cambridge itself where it was regarded as one of few "guidebooks" to the routes onto the roofs of the town's ancient buildings. Famous climbs documented in the book are the King's College and St John's College chapels and the "Senate House leap".
A new authorised edition of The Night Climbers of Cambridge was published on 26 October 2007 by Oleander Press, Cambridge, to mark the 70th anniversary of the original edition.
An omnibus edition of The Roof Climber's Guide to Trinity was published on 11 July 2011 by Oleander. Its introduction contains further details about Symington and his book.
Symington stood for Harborough in 1950 as an independent Mosleyite candidate, receiving 273 votes. In 1958 he published the book Return to Responsibility: A New Concept of the Case for Fascism in the Post-War World.
Famous quotes containing the words night, climbers and/or cambridge:
“From man’s blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What’s the meaning of all song?
“Let all things pass away.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The view is fine from fifty,
Experienced climbers say....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?—not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)