Mayday!

Cambridge’s most infamous party girl tips her hat to Dafydd Jones, the society photographer whose latest book captures more than 40 years of the school’s hedonistic May Balls

By Caroline Calloway

If I could tell you one thing: Don’t be jealous. Don’t let this book make you feel like your life is boring. Like all the best parties are happening without you.

First of all, Dafydd and I aren’t always invited to the parties we make art about, but more on that fascinating dynamic later! What I want you to know up front and above all else is that, yes, truly— just like you —I was once sick to my fucking guts with envy when I thumbed through the exquisite Oxford-ball photography of British living legend Dafydd Jones. Are all the better parties always in a different place? A different time? Should I have been born 30 years earlier? Seventy? A century? Two?! READ ON