David Elstein (History 1961) was only 16 years old when he began his studies at Gonville & Caius College.

David sat Caius' Scholarship exams on the advice of his history teachers at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School. At the time, attaining a Scholarship allowed a student to matriculate at the University of Cambridge without the need to finish A-Levels, so David started at Caius two months before his 17th birthday.

Being significantly younger than most of his peers did not hold David back, and he achieved First-Class results in Part I and Part II of his course. He believes he is likely the youngest Caius historian to graduate with a Double First, having done so aged 19.

“I’ll lay claim to the title until challenged,” he says.

David puts his success down to the excellent teaching offered to Caius historians by Neil McKendrick, his Director of Studies and later Master of the College.

“I felt a bit out of my depth early on, and it was only because Neil kept me up to the mark and treated me as having something to offer that I was able to elude the imposter syndrome,” says David.

“I felt that the intellectual climate was so conducive to success that I could fit in comfortably without having effortfully to step up to the mark. Being a Caius historian, you would just rise with the cream to the top of the bottle.”

David’s fondness for Mr McKendrick was evidently reciprocated. When the latter was appointed Master and established Caius’ Development Campaign Board (DCB), David was one of the first people he invited to join.

“For the first 20 or 25 years after I graduated, I had almost nothing to do with Caius,” he says. “I felt that it was a disappointingly conservative college in its resistance to female students. It was rather pleased with itself, with not a lot to be pleased about.

“But when Neil became Master – and women had been admitted by then – I felt that there was an opportunity to become more engaged. Something immediately obvious to Neil was how derelict the fundraising process had become and that, compared to other colleges, Caius barely registered in terms of its alumni engagement.

“Our job was to look at our pool of alumni and ask: how do you get them to engage with the College? How do you motivate them to think that it is worth contributing to the endowment in order to fund studentships, professorships, facilities, organ scholarships or whatever it might be?

“And that can be transformative of the College’s fortunes. Without the alumni engagement, Caius would be forced to drive up its charges to students and cut back on all kinds of other expenditures.”

Although the DCB no longer exists, its work is continued by Caius’ Development Advisory Group and remains ever important to ensure that the College can provide the best teaching standards and tutorial systems to its students. David has welcomed the increasing success of these in recent years and the concomitant improvement in students’ results. This year, the College celebrated its strongest ever set of finalists’ results.

David stresses that this success is underpinned by the support that alumni can offer to Caius. This support is a way of paying back for the quality of education the College provides, which is an excellent springboard for all kinds of careers.

Beyond Caius, David has enjoyed a prolific career as a writer, producer and broadcaster. He initially joined the BBC when he was no longer able to undertake his planned DPhil at the University of Oxford due to his supervisor being appointed Vice-Chancellor of East Anglia University.

He has since worked at ITV, founded Brook Productions, was Managing Director of Primetime Television, Director of Programmes at Thames Television and Head of Programmes at BSkyB, and launched Channel 5 as its Chief Executive.

While David’s CV boasts a seemingly endless list of projects, he has always had an especial fondness for working on historical documentaries. His love for history which was nourished during his time at Caius has persisted through the years.

“At one point, I found myself making a documentary on the subject of my planned postgraduate thesis, which was the replacement of British power by American power in Palestine after the Second World War,” he says.

“And working on The World at War, which probably ranks as one of the top historical documentaries ever made in the UK, was a great opportunity to deploy the skills I had honed at Caius.”