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You may not be overly familiar with the comings and goings of Alcuin of York. I thought not.

Born in 735 he was one of the best sources of information about late 8th Century life. He was Master of the Palace School at Aachen, and built up a network of friends, students and clerics who fanned out across Europe.

Alcuin travelled to Rome, to Frankfurt, and ended his days in Tours when the average peasant would often live out his entire life within the boundaries of a single parish.

And he loomed large in the address given in his name delivered by Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the , to students at Cambridge University.

He told them Alcuin was a true Englishman as well as a true European made famous for his work at Charlemagne's Court in Aachen "sowing seeds of light that would help Western and Central Europe in its slow crawl out of darkness again". Mr Barroso told them that Cambridge University very much fits into this tradition, attracting great European scholars, and that Cambridge is an active participant in the European Union's student exchange schemes and joint research projects, some of which he'd seen during his visit.
He praised the city's Centre for Industrial Photonics.

"It supports industry across Europe through research and development and technology transfer activity. It is currently working, in partnership with groups like Fiat and Siemens, with nano-magnetic materials, to create high performance magnets for electric cars that depend less on rare earth elements.

"The consequences of this research on the day-to-day lives of all Europeans could be dramatic," he said.

Mr Barroso ended his speech with an appeal to the fresh-faced ranks in front of him. "I want to highlight an issue that is high on the radar screen of the British government - the under-representation of British nationals among the staff in the European institutions.

"Only 5% of the EU's total workforce is from the UK, whereas the UK accounts for more than 12% of the EU population.

"Worse still - around half of the existing British EU officials are due to retire in the next five years; and in last year's main a shockingly low number of applicants were British - less than 1.5%."

With unemployment among young people currently running at 20%, I doubt his exhortations fell on deaf ears.

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