Letter: Dangerous tone in street of pub run

From Mr D. F. King

Sir: I don't know when John Windsor last walked down King Street in Cambridge ("The wrong sort of barbarism", 9 February) but I can assure him it still has five pubs, one of which has recently been refurbished and renamed the "King Street Run". The new pub sign depicts drunken gown-clad undergraduates staggering about in the way often associated by the general public with the word "Oxbridge". However, the reality is that King Street has been declared as potentially dangerous after dark, not because of potential conflict between "Town" and "Gown" but because of beggars and dossers hiding in the shadows of the blocks of modern flats that have sprung up along it in recent years.

To suggest the street is once again "vile in the extreme" would be going a bit far, but students from Sidney Sussex College (with its back gate adjoining King Street) have been warned to take care when returning to accommodation in King Street late at night.

Yours sincerely,

D. F. KING

Sidney Sussex College

Cambridge

9 February