Sir John Edwin Sandys, who served as Orator from 1876 to 1919, published (in two goes) all the speeches and addresses that he composed. Subsequent Orators, if they have published, have selected, and I follow them. In my fourteen years as Orator, from 1993 to 2007, I presented 116 people (86 men and 30 women) for an honorary doctorate of the University and 5 (3 and 2 respectively) for an honorary MA; I also made a speech in honour of Aung San Suu Kyi, who could not risk leaving Burma to receive the doctorate she was offered. From those 122 speeches, I have selected 52 (37 addressed to men and 15 to women). I have had three criteria in selecting them: variety, individuality and repeatability. If any for whom I spoke look here and are disappointed to find that speech omitted, I can say only that the omission had nothing to do with them personally; at least they are in the majority.

The office of Orator goes back to 1521, and there are traces of the job being done earlier than that. Those interested in its creation, use and development should read the excellent account given by my immediate predecessor, James Diggle, in the preface to his Cambridge Orations 1982–1993: A Selection (Cambridge, 1994). On the composition of speeches he rightly quotes W. K. C. Guthrie, Orator from 1939 to 1957: