While an undergraduate here, Frederic Aranda used the College’s photographic dark room to develop photographs of friends and tutors. He has since built a dynamic and successful photography career, with subjects including Margaret Thatcher, Ian McKellen, Marcus Rashford and Vivienne Westwood. He has received multiple awards and in 2022 had two portraits hung in the National Portrait Gallery.

‘Dictionary Johnson’, a name earned from his famous A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), was a critic, biographer, essayist, poet and lexicographer, and one of the most significant literary figures of his time. Although a lack of funds had prevented him finishing his degree, he would later describe his time at Pembroke as influential and formative, laying the groundwork for his career.

A striking photograph of Henry Hayes appears at the front of an album of portraits compiled by Pembroke student George Hodgkinson (1856). Unlike the other students and academics featured, Henry was a College servant. He was with Pembroke for nearly 70 years. In this and his other long-serving role as parish clerk at St Aldates, Henry’s dedication to the corner of Oxford he called home is clear.