Walking down Magdalene Street this evening I was depressed to find that one of my favourite establishments — a lovely secondhand bookshop — had gone. I guess its lease was up and the landlord (Magdalene College in all probability) proposed a whopping increase. This is why Cambridge is increasingly being denuded of ‘real’ shops and is now crammed with the kind of ludicrous boutiques which are the only enterprises that can pay the exorbitant rents demanded by the colleges.