Coburn-Mulligan Gazette 2025

Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue

The old world went slightly crazy, turned on its head by new US tariffs and economic disruption that were borrowed from a playbook of protectionism and made it challenging for our blue-chip business clients. But so what? The something new in our world was that Alice and Martyn were married in August. We borrowed Martyn as a son-in-law and enjoyed discovering that we were now related to the Smith family and the Goddards. Turns out that the more families you connect to, the more fun you can have. Nothing to be blue about.

The Wedding of Our Year 

On a sun-filled day in August, and on a night of a full-moon, Alice and Martyn pledged their troths and threw a fun party. We congregated in Missenden Abbey to bear witness, throw confetti, shed the occasional tear, and fling ourselves around in a ceilidh. The main question on everybody's lips was "What took them so long?".

Saying Yes to the Dress

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a bride-to-be must spend many hours kissing froggy dresses before choosing the perfect one.  Helen, Alice and chief bridesmaid Helen took this research task very seriously (aided by a glass or two of prosecco).  Final conclusion: buy the Ideal Dress online, and have it altered to fit. The perfect result! Then of course scoping out the venue, plotting colour schemes, and making the bridal millinery: hair vines for the bride and bridesmaids and hat for the M.o.B. (a.k.a. Helen).

Half a Century of Reminders

1975 was the year that Andrew and Helen came up to Cambridge, with a head full of both dreams and hair. 2025 entailed celebrating the 50 years since those halcyon days and reconnecting with the year-group and friends who shared those formative times. Christ's and Churchill colleges both hosted 50th alumni anniversaries, and we reconnected with our fellow students at the Faculty of Architecture and many friends we've had the pleasure of keeping in touch with in the half-century since. Keeping in the mood, we also re-lived the songs of the 70s, going to concerts by Lindisfarne and Australian Pink Floyd. Shine on you crazy diamonds...

Helen's Hats 

Helen’s HNC course in millinery at Morley College, Chelsea, culminated with her Symbiosis collection being selected for a final show at Lock & Co., the renowned hatters in St. James’s Street, Mayfair. Her hats were exhibited in the Morley end of year show in their Waterloo gallery – and also featured in the bi-monthly Hat Magazine.

Her millinery portfolio can be seen here.

In January, the millinery class went to Fashion Week in Paris for events co-organised by the British Hat Guild and its French counterpart. A highlight was a visit to the Stephen Jones, Chapeaux d’Artiste exhibition at the Palais Galliera, guided by the star milliner in person. As an extra treat, Helen met up with school friend Annick to visit the gleaming interior of Notre Dame – newly-restored after the catastrophic fire in April 2019.

The hat-making group came together again for the acclaimed highlight of the millinery year – Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot. (It’s quite famous for horse racing too). They wore their most spectacular hats, some from their final collections and others made specially for the occasion. They had unbridled access to the Royal Enclosure, courtesy of the Members at Ascot among them, rounding off with a fabulous tailgate buffet supper in the Members’ carpark. Many, many thanks to Julia Bullman and her long-suffering husband, Pat.

Dr and Dr Coburn-Smith

Apart from getting married (did we mention that?) it’s been a busy year for Alice and Martyn Coburn-Smith. And not just changing their names on all the endless official documentation you need to operate your lives. After several years of planning, they finally made their long-awaited trip to Thailand. From navigating vibrant canals to a personal cooking class, they loved every minute. A major highlight was spending a day with rescued elephants, learning their stories and making their jumbo breakfasts.

Dr Martyn

It’s been a milestone year for Martyn. He submitted his PhD thesis, survived and passed his viva —graduation awaits in 2026. Congratulations Doctorand Coburn-Smith! As if that weren’t enough excitement, he also started a new job in November, joining a team that includes some familiar faces from a previous compan.

Marathon Tasks for Alice

Alice continues in the same role with the British Orthopedic Society, which somehow manages to deliver a fresh set of challenges each week. She rounded off the year with the successful launch of their new exam platform in December. Outside work, she’s kept up her running, completing two half-marathons and even joining a 200-mile relay around London’s greenbelt as a last-minute sub. Meanwhile, Martyn has taken on the role of strength coach, introducing her to weightlifting with great enthusiasm.

Henry's Final PhD Chapters

Henry is finishing up his PhD at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He has been hitting the academic job market, publishing papers on hallucinations in AI and presenting his work at conferences in the US and UK. He is planning for this to be his last year in the United States before heading on to pastures new, and is very glad to be back in the UK and (relative) sanity for Xmas!

Five Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Five intrepid aeronauts scrambled in a Dragon Rapide into the skies over Cambridge, when friends Martin, Kate, and Andy joined us for a swift aerial inspection of the landmarks of the city, and a quick circuit above our house at Ditton Corner. Helen said it saved on having a roof survey.

Sports Section

We've been to quite a few footy games over the past year, at the Emirates' stadium, Anfield, and Old Trafford. The 2024/25 season ended with Liverpool (Andrew's team) as Premiership Champions, and Arsenal (Helen's team) second. Can Arsenal step it up a notch this season, and win a trophy or two? At the halfway point of the 2025/26 season, Arsenal are flying high and looking imperious, and Liverpool have imploded. We're looking forward to the second half of the season. Helen and Alice saw Arsenal take on PSV in the Champions’ League in April. Andrew came along for the drubbing of Bayern Munich in November – the same week as Alice was treated to a nice result too against old rivals Spurs. We enjoyed the Manchester United-Liverpool rivalry with Martin, Kate and Andy, and even caught key Champions League matches from bars in Brussels.

The British sunshine is a poor excuse to wear a wide-brimmed hat for at Wimbledon, but it helps with the rituals, which involve drinking Pimms on Henman Hill and winding up Djokovic on Centre Court. Lunch was an opportunity to meet chef Michel Roux jnr, and ask him about his delicious seafood sauce recipes.

The main talking point at Bumps 2025 was the Peterhouse M1 crew which was stuffed with five "Blues" (rowers who represented the University in the Boat Race) and an Olympian gold medallist. The ringer-powered boat climbed eight places to finish second on the river – their highest position since 1887 – and at the end attempted an unconventional 'overbump' to try to go Head of the River. They might have succeeded had that been legal. There was a lot of tut-tutting on the riverbank that day.

The Arts

Don't Cry for Me, Rachel Zegler

The hot tickets this summer were to see Rachel Zegler starring as Evita, singing 'that song' from the street balcony of the Palladium Theatre. We paid good money to be sitting in the seats inside while she sang to the crowds outside. So we stuck around and went to see her do her evening performance from the cheaper vantage point of the street outside. Oh what a circus. Oh what a show!

Edinburgh Fringe

August brought the Edinburgh Festival, and another amazing variety of shows and creativity, enjoyed with our friends Anne and Simon. The highlight show was 'Mariupol', scored highly by all of us, and the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland. We also enjoyed James Joyce's Ulysses as a puppet show, the inevitable pick-on-the-audience comedy show, and the Lady Macbeth netball musical. A fabulous weekend north of the border.

Made in Ancient Egypt

(and Modern Cambridge)

Do you know how to work like an Egyptian? The Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge features the working practices of the artisans who built the pyramids. Well worth catching. We visited with our friends earlier in the year. Helen has developed a serious side-interest in Bronze Age technology. (Why? Well that would be another story). At a workshop connected to the exhibition she had a chance to try out copper alloy tools typical of the period such as saws, chisels, adzes and bow drills.  Helen created her own cubit measure and helped to assemble a model coffin for a mummified dog.

Travel

Horta Cultural

April saw us, with our friends Andy and Martin and Kate (AKA 'The Brians')  enjoying a wonderfully sunny long weekend in Brussels, where we visited early 20th century buildings by Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta and his successors in Art Deco, such as Govaerts and Van Vaerenbergh. We also sampled the amazing beers, chocolates, and moules frites that have made Belgium such a culinary superpower.

Finally Meeting Our Waterloo

There are also a lot of battlefields in Belgium. Something to do with it being exactly where European superpowers collide. It is famously the 1815 site of Waterloo, my my, where Napoleon did surrender.  Actually we learned that he ran away leaving 60,000 casualties, after being fought to a standstill by Wellington and Blucher. Our tour round the battlefield was guided by Peter Forrest, an authority on the battle, who kindly came out of retirement to see if Andrew could remember what he'd told him six years ago. 

The Fields of Flanders

Belgium is also where the bloodiest battles of World War I were fought. The Brians took in the battlefields around Wipers – the Tommies’ nickname for the hellish trenches of the Ypres salient. We paid our respects at the grave of Helen’s great-uncle Joe Shirt at Lijssenthoek military cemetery – one of half a million soldiers who fell in the conflict.

Business Section

Resilient Risilience

This was the fourth year of Andrew's company Risilience (Risk + Resilience, geddit?). Risilience helps companies manage their climate change risk and decarbonize their activities. Client numbers doubled this year, bringing the total amount of annual greenhouse gas emissions they are eliminating to over a gigatonne. But this year saw a backlash against sustainability spearheaded by the Trump presidency, pulling the US out of the Paris agreement and halting climate-protecting regulation, which has caused many companies to pause. We face uncertain times, but the fundamentals haven't changed – fossil fuels cost more than renewables so it makes good business sense to switch to a more sustainable business model. Risilience clients are finding that doing good for the planet is good business.

Ey-Up – It's AI

It's all been about Artificial Intelligence this year. AI has been rapidly permeating daily life and AI companies have reached baffling valuations. The technological advances are jaw-dropping. Risilience is deploying AI tools that promise to greatly improve efficiency and client engagement. But there are also questions about how society will adapt, how the wealth created should be distributed, and how it will change the global economy. Copyright owners are challenging the rights of AI companies to freely consume their works as training datasets. As an author of two published books on risk, Andrew has been invited to join a class action against AI company Anthropic that appears to have consumed published repositories to offer AI-generated risk insights via its popular 'Claude' chatbot. Perhaps if they change its name to 'Andrew' he'll drop the charges.

Urban Shrinkage in Summer School

Helen’s work on Shrinking Cities continued with an invitation to lecture at a summer school for PhD students in Bad Durkheim, Germany, and participate in a short study of flood defences in the Rhine valley. Helen’s paper with Vlad Mychenko – based on previous fieldwork in Stoke-on-Trent – will shortly appear in a special issue on urban shrinkage in the journal Cities.

Write Up on WriteOn 

Helen’s creative writing continues with the Cambridge scriptwriting combo WriteOn.  She’s co-writing the script for a Verbatim production (documentary-style play) with premiere planned for late 2026. She met actor Robson Green at a recent Royal Television Society event to mark the 10th and penultimate season of BBC TV crime drama 'Grantchester'. And…she’s had two short scripts 'Our Paradise' and 'Loving Care' accepted for the Churchill Writers’ Group Anthology for 2025.  Publication details will be circulated when available!

Yarn-Bombing Campaign Continues

Andrew has continued to faithfully record the crocheted ornaments that adorn the post box in Fen Ditton to mark special occasions, which have appeared throughout the past two years (see last year's Gazette). This year's collection was even finer, commemorating Valentine's day, Easter, Euros football, Olympics, autumn, the postal service itself, and, of course, Christmas. Even though it was nothing to do with us, these fine, mad efforts deserve to be recorded for posterity.

Milestones

Remembering Edna

In the spring, it was 10 years since the death of Helen’s mother, Edna.  We gathered several of the cousins together for a visit to the family graves in Lancashire, and a commemorative lunch. We’ve paid respects too at the viewpoints where we scattered the ashes of Helen’s auntie Vera (d. 2020) at the Singing Ringing Tree in Lancashire, and brother Ian (d. 2007) at Wandlebury near Cambridge.

And Our General Photo Scrapbook...

An album of more of our 'photos of the year'.

And in case you've lost your way, this is the home page of the Coburn Family: Andrew Coburn, Helen Mulligan, Alice Coburn-Smith, and Henry Coburn.