Larry Amure
The power of a second chance
Larry as a student at Cambridge in 1981 (left), and today, retired and still continuing to support the community that shaped him (right).
Larry Amure The power of a second chance
Larry as a student at Cambridge in 1981 (above), and today, retired and still continuing to support the community that shaped him (below).
Larry Amure's path to Cambridge was far from straightforward.
As a child growing up in Nigeria, he dreamed of studying medicine at Cambridge after a peer told him that a Cambridge graduate represented the very best. But his journey took him first to Bristol for his undergraduate degree, before writing to the University of Cambridge to enquire about PhD opportunities.
That letter changed his life. Professor Charles Shute, a physiologist and Fellow of Christ's College, invited Larry for an interview and offered him a place as a PhD student.
"Even though I don't think I am that clever, he obviously saw something," Larry says.
The PhD opened the door to clinical training at Addenbrooke's and a career that would span ophthalmology, general practice and medical education. Nearly 50 years later, Larry still describes Professor Shute as one of the most influential figures in his life.
Cambridge would offer Larry more than one life-changing opportunity.
Funding his studies himself, he regularly worked three or four jobs while studying. After late shifts in a pub, he would stay up into the early hours revising. Despite those efforts, he failed all 3 of his April clinical examinations.
At the time, failures were publicly displayed outside the common room, marked with crosses beside each paper. Larry remembers the shock of seeing 3 crosses next to his name.
The Clinical Dean, Professor Hawkins, offered him the opportunity to resit the examinations later that year. Larry passed and continued his studies.
Today, that experience remains central to the message he shares through his memoir Beyond the Horizon Might be Better.
"When things look pretty bad, there may just be good news around the corner."
That belief in persistence would shape the rest of his career.
Larry initially specialised in ophthalmology. Growing up in Nigeria, he had seen how conditions such as cataracts and trachoma caused avoidable blindness despite being highly treatable. "There's nothing better, in my opinion, than restoring sight."
After 3 years in ophthalmology, he moved into general practice and worked for a decade for Addenbrooke's through ophthalmology clinics based at Ely Hospital.
Throughout his career, Larry also faced significant challenges, including racial prejudice. He writes openly about these experiences in his memoir but speaks of them without bitterness. Instead, he credits his resilience to his Christian faith and a guiding principle drawn from Romans 12:18: "As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."
Today, much of Larry's impact extends beyond medicine.
For more than 20 years, he has funded the education of students in Uganda, taking on a new student every few years. He serves as a trustee of a local care charity, vice-chair of the governing council of a special educational needs school in Northstowe, and has examined Cambridge clinical students.
His commitment to community is rooted in gratitude, and he still meets regularly with friends from Christ's and medical school, whom he describes simply as "brothers". Earlier this year, 21 of them gathered in East Sussex to celebrate 50 years of friendship.
For Larry, his time at Cambridge was shaped by people who saw potential where others might not have. Decades later, he continues to repay those acts of faith by giving others the opportunities he was once given himself.