We provide further testimony regarding Simon Goldhill. We thank our contributor for her honesty in recounting difficult details.
Unfortunately, ‘sharking’ remains commonplace in many UK universities, as the Warwick University rapechat scandal demonstrated in 2019. It’s still a problem in Cambridge undergraduate life, from colleges to sports clubs to societies, as Varsity recently noted. Even among academics, the 21 Group knows of a College where there is a competition among some senior male Fellows to sleep with the prettiest Junior Research Fellow.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this statement is intended to suggest that Simon Goldhill has committed any illegality.
“I arrived at Kings College Cambridge in 1977, a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday. Having grown up with a violent parent, I was sure Kings would be a safer place.
Simon was then starting his third year. He was a well-known figure, partly because he’d been involved in putting together the ‘blue book.’ This was a slim volume, given to every new student, which provided information about sex. I recall diagrams and phone numbers. I don’t think there was anything about consent.
Within twenty-four hours of our arrival, a female fresher was ‘going out’ with Simon. He and his mates had gone to the list by the mailboxes, and invited all first-year women with ‘interesting names’ to a party.
This process is now called ‘sharking.’ Back then, it didn’t have a name.
My turn came in January. I had opted for an extra course in Latin, but my school hadn’t prepared me sufficiently. Admitting this might cause my tutor to look on me as inadequate. I mentioned my difficulties in Simon’s earshot, and he offered to come to my room and help.
He spent little time explaining grammar. I had expected some small talk. I had not anticipated that socialising would get so physical, so fast.
My clearest memory is of Simon saying, ‘We’re going to fuck.’ It was a statement, not a question.
For eight weeks, we had what I thought of as a relationship. In fact, it was a set of primarily sexual transactions. These were concluded after Easter when Simon informed me he needed to focus on working for Finals.
Our paths crossed again, during my last year.
At the start of the second term, Simon was the person I saw after I’d tried some self-harm. (This attempt was a result of spending Christmas with my family. )
After graduating I knew I could not return to my parents’ house. It was the summer of 1980. I was homeless, jobless, skint and scared.
Simon was then a postgrad. With money from his parents, he’d rented a rather grand house for the remainder of his doctoral studies. One of his housemates wouldn’t arrive till autumn. He suggested I stay for a while.
Before I had even unpacked, he made it clear he wanted to have sex with me again.
I needed to think quickly. If I refused, would Simon find someone else for the vacant room? It was better go along with it.
For the next forty-five years, I thought of Simon and me as almost equal in folly. There was the zeitgeist, the collegiate culture, our own youth. All of these made errors inevitable. But I had matured, moved away. Simon may have stayed on, but he too would have changed.
Learning about Simon’s later behaviour has been disturbing.
It is hard to accept that I was intimate with a predator, a bully and an abuser. Even if such intimacy was superficial, and represented an early stage of bullying, abusing and predation.
Revisiting – and rewriting – the past is not pleasant.
Simon Goldhill worked in circles (Kings College, the Classics Faculty) where everyone is intensely visible, Even if his tendency to ‘overstep the mark’ was inbuilt, why was he allowed to get away with it?
There is pain when I think of the people Simon has hurt. There is anger towards the institutions that enabled him.”
(The image shows the teeth of Selachimorpha (shark) in the Provincial Museum of the Sea, in San Cibrao, Galicia, Spain taken by Fernando Losada Rodríguez and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)
“There is anger towards the institutions that enabled him”
The culture of secrecy and cover up of misconduct enabled him and others like him, and the culture reflects the principles of the people who run the institution, not the institution itself. But now that we know about it, why does he remain as a Professor at Cambridge and a Fellow at King’s many months after the report was produced and an increasing number of people came forward to talk about his misconduct? What are these managers of Cambridge University balancing exactly?
I know for a fact that the managers of Cambridge University can be very quick at expelling members when they really want it, namely students, but that will be a tale for another day.
“Snapshot three, I am younger and less caring of myself and others, and I have been having an intimate relationship with a married Professor, a charismatic narcissist to whom I am completely addicted, despite the fact that the deceit frequently makes me sick. Eventually I end the relationship (sort of, and not for the first time), but while everything is still messy, he moves on to a pneumatic younger colleague and taunts me by describing their florid romps. No one comes out of this story well, not the narcissist, nor the colleague who, when the narcissist won’t leave his wife, begins sleeping with the Professor in the office opposite his, and certainly not me‘”
From the wonderful & highly recommended ‘Pilgrimage to Dollywood‘ by Helen Morales
Funny. Our Simon makes an interesting link between heterosexuality, narcissism, and abuses of women here (6.03, in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD2TlPUNQbQ)
“Instead of saying I am a heterosexual, why don’t you say, I am a selfish narssicist that usually abuses women”
That is an extraordinary find. He says exactly that, word for word.
It can only be coincidence that he says that!
In the talk where this was said he was talking in the third person, rather than about himself, but yes- it did come across as weird to the audience. I think most people missed the “bum note” ( he was talking fast as always but in hindsight it does have a very different contextual interpretation.
This is a very honest contribution, I am sure it was very hard to write.
Thank you for writing it.
“I had opted for an extra course in Latin, but my school hadn’t prepared me sufficiently. Admitting this might cause my tutor to look on me as inadequate. I mentioned my difficulties in Simon’s earshot, and he offered to come to my room and help. He spent little time explaining grammar. I had expected some small talk. I had not anticipated that socialising would get so physical, so fast.
My clearest memory is of Simon saying, ‘We’re going to fuck.’ It was a statement, not a question.”
This is revealing. There is a clear connection in his mind between offering extra tuition and fucking.
I am certain that everyone at King’s knew about Simon and laughed it off as him simply “acting within his rights”
In all his affairs known to me he seems to go for vulnerable women. This is his type as much as he is their type. A normal functional woman would not touch him with an end of a stick. It is exploitation, our old friend.
Gillian Tett, Provost of King’s College, seems to be busy pontificating on Bill Maher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gUw-ieC6-8
No one asked her about Simon Goldhill and his contributions to College life but she does say “one on one supervisions again, not to talk about Cambridge, but that is what we do there” so she had him in her mind throughout the interview… It is just another day for these people. Life goes on, I guess, and they hope that those who now talk about the issues will eventually forget, or at least stop talking about it.
Judging from what happens in Christ’s College, it would be virtually impossible that she did not know about the Report that was leaked and the investigation itself if she really wanted to know because of concerns with her students, namely because some of the events happened in her own SCR. Senior Tutors need to know and only those who do not know how colleges work think that the Senior Tutor would not tell the Master of the College. Of course, it is more convenient to say that it was confidential and that she did not have access to the information because of the procedures imposed by the University.
More recent reporting re King’s College, Gillian Tett and Huppert/Goldhill –
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/28/gillian-tett-sexual-harassment-oxbridge-college-provost/?msockid=24d5ba5b947262c22349a91d95c96333
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/cambridge-kings-college-gillian-tett-inappropriate-behaviour-zgfhmhf9j
Gillian Tett is quoted in The Times (28 July 2026) as follows:
” She added that King’s was ‘absolutely not unique’ in facing scrutiny over sexual misconduct cases, but hoped the college could help drive wider reform. ‘We want to be part of the solution,’ she said. ‘We’re not going to sweep this under the carpet. We’re going to stand up and be counted and recognise that things need to change.
‘By doing this external review, we’re not saying that we’re dramatically worse than anybody, but we are trying to say that we want to take responsibility and accountability and create the best atmosphere and environment for the next generation of students, for faculty and for everyone else.’ ”
Will this review be meaningful? How will this review investigate perpetrators beyond Huppert/Goldhill and culture and practices going back many years beyond these two names? And all those who knew, enabled and (in some cases) even benefitted by not speaking out over all these years?
Do we know the name of the barrister who Gillian Tett/King’s College have hired?
The person in the best position to effectively help another person in need of help is the person who is in a position to put the lowest amount of additional undue pressure on the person in need of help whilst also relieving the highest amount of existing pressure on the person in need of help.
If a person offers to help a person who is facing significant challenges – academic and/or accommodation – and in need of help from others to deal with those challenges then the person offering that help does not need to have sex with the person they are offering to help in order to give it.
The person in need of help is being put under high amounts of additional undue pressure by the person offering to help them. This is not consistent with the person offering help being in a position to effectively help the person in need of help from others.
If the person offering help is putting the person they are offering help to under undue pressure to have sex with them this means the person offering help is in reality unable to offer any effective help to the person in need of help.
Accommodation where a person cannot feel safe and secure because they are being put under undue pressure to have sex with another person in the accommodation is not suitable accommodation to offer any person.
Academic support where a person is being put under high undue pressure by another person does not support high independence of thought & is not suitable academic support to offer any person.
The person offering help cannot then relieve any amount of existing pressure – academic and/or accommodation – on the person in need of help. This is not consistent with the person offering help being in a position to effectively help the person in need of help from others.
If the person in need of help with academic and/or accommodation challenges makes it clear they don’t want to have sex with the person offering to help them with those challenges & the person offering them help them with those challenges then withdraws the offer of help this is not a case of the help on offer being lost, it’s a case of learning something about the help that was on offer.
The help that was being offered was not real help – low amounts of additional undue pressure coupled to high amounts of relief from existing pressure – it was the exact opposite of real help – high amounts of additional undue pressure coupled to low amounts of relief from existing pressure.
If a person is experiencing increased vulnerability in their life as a result of facing a set of exceptionally difficult challenges & in need of help from others to overcome that set of challenges it is critical to find the right people to get that help from.
There are remarkable people like the person above who not only survive the experiences of exceptional vulnerability that life throws at them – despite having the exact opposite of real help being given to them by others – but who also have the fortitude to put those experiences into words. These situations are extremely hazardous and this outcome is by no means guaranteed.
“There are remarkable people like the person above who not only survive the experiences of exceptional vulnerability that life throws at them – despite having the exact opposite of real help being given to them by others – but who also have the fortitude to put those experiences into words.”
Agreed 100 per cent.
If a person is experiencing increased vulnerability in their life as a result of facing a set of exceptionally difficult challenges & in need of help from others to overcome that set of challenges it is critical to find the right people to get that help from.
Yes, absolutely.
It is all the more shameful, therefore, that among those who will be in prime positions to become aware of such increased vulnerability – HR, who have access to all the personal, medical and “confidential” information – are individuals no less predatorial than in the report of this blog, and far more dangerous in terms of the harm they can inflict.
Instead of safeguarding the vulnerable individual, measures are then taken, quite deliberately and through careful advice, to undermine their dignity and their sense of safety, exploit their vulnerability further and increase their stress and suffering to levels which can eventually place their health and safety at risk.
When an institution harbours and protects such predators among the staff in charge of “ensuring appropriate behaviour” or “dignity at work” or the “signposting of appropriate HR processes” it is no longer surprising that vulnerable victims of predators in positions of power have little chance of survival – unless they are exceptionally resilient and/or lucky enough to find the right people to get help from.
Surviving a predator in Cambridge is really surviving Cambridge…
I agree. While this post is about the behaviour of one single individual, institutional predation at Cambridge cannot be overlooked and it is far more difficult to address. Simon Goldhill may well be sacked from Cambridge and King’s in the best case scenario, but the culture of institutional predation at Cambridge will not be addressed with the current leadership. That is a major health hazard that managers are ignoring.
This is a main lesson that I learned. If reputational management trumps everything in an institution, that can be used against them because it is a key weakness. Victims simply have to talk about their experiences and if not enough quorum exists in the short-term, a single individual can still give them a lot of work if he/she is not silent. That was my way of surviving Cambridge.
” If reputational management trumps everything in an institution, that can be used against them because it is a key weakness.”
Agreed. Reputational management is the legal / managerial argument. What runs alongside it, and what this argument enables is far more unsavoury.
Word of comfort. Sometimes I still get sad when I think that many people in Cambridge know about these issues and simply ignored it because they think it is not part of their job description. Others, who actively participate in the misconduct, think that they are just following what they were told to do and thus sure not feel responsible. However, what these incidents reveal is their real character, and that should not affect mine. It is extremely difficult to challenge a powerful institution that lost its values, but it reveals our character, and that will stay with us for life.
Two years ago…
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/26867
Situations can arise in an organisation that are not specific to an organisation & where the same type of situation could also arise in elsewhere in society. If there is undue pressure in an organisation to not interact with external policing in handling such situations and/or there is undue pressure in external policing to not interact with an organisation in handling such situations an organisation can become isolated from external policing in relation to the handling of such situations when they arise in an organisation.
If an organisation becomes isolated from external policing in relation to the handling of such situations an organisation can lose touch with developments in external policing in relation to the handling of such situations. That isolation could happen at a point in time when external policing is evolving its own handling of such situations – e.g. harassment – & external policing is itself becoming more effective in handling such situations.
The risk then is the organisation could – while isolated from external policing in relation to handling such situations – enter into a state of relative ineffectiveness in handling such situations. If a significant differential in effectiveness in handling such situations arise as a result of an organisation being isolated from external policing in relation to handling such situations this could result in organisational handling of such situations that is then both relatively ineffective & very difficult to explain to the rest of society.
Originally he was called big fish. Now it’s sharking…
Perhaps octopus with hands everywhere
Simon Goldhill has always been a swaggering bully and an overt predator. He was sometimes sloshed, too, but that seems to have been part of the act as much as anything. The video where he defines a heterosexual male as, ‘A narcissist who repeatedly abuses women,’ is actually painful to watch.
The bigger question, which doesn’t get asked enough, is about all of those who knew exactly what Simon was doing, but who repeatedly turned a blind eye. The Cambridge Classics Faculty was riddled with Marxists and postmodern theorists in the History and Literature sections in the 90s. Some of them, now safely retired and enjoying the profits of best-selling books on Roman history, are even regarded as ‘national treasures’. So long as you were in their club you could say and do whatever the hell you wanted to both graduates and undergrads and nobody would bat an eyelid. They even came up with new finals papers like Goldhill’s ‘X Paper’ on Ancient Sexuality, for gullible groupies to sign up to (and it was an open secret that if Goldhill was a marker, then his favourites would be nailed on for a First). It was extremely cult-like and some of those who signed up undoubtedly got a career boost from joining. If the price of entry was being groomed by Goldhill, then some appear to have considered it a price worth paying, while others will have been scarred for life.
There was (and still is) a King’s Classics stable. Might take two rivers to clean it. Other commentators have referred to “open secrets” or the complicity that maintained the stable’s invulnerability and continuing career success. The only surprise is that there has so far been no mention of John Henderson (fluidly erstwhile boyfriend of a national treasure and another emeritus professor).
The national treasure has been uncommonly silent on the matter
My satirical novel, The Lady from Samos, set in a fictional classics department, addresses some of these issues