Part 3 (1/2)

Have I betrayed a way of looking at the world? Have I turned eoisified and sold out? Most would think the question preposterous, but I do not While the nicotine habit erous, anti-social, ontologically pointless and physically deleterious and while those in its thrall ent, weak and perverse, I still findand bully the from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses, but between mouthfuls An American woent!'

'Excuseto kill you,' she said, 'still you do it'

'How differently I ht behave,' Tom said, 'if inificant coe, Hope, Fear and Love But the appetites that drive us and our susceptibility, resistance, acceptance and denial of substances define and reveal us at least as much as abstract expressions of belief or bald recitations of action and achievereater control over their appetites and less interest in thereed all e The Winter of Discontent, they called it Strikes by lorry drivers, car workers, nurses, aers I don't suppose I had ever been happier

After all the store years love, shame, theft, scandal, expulsion, atte I finally see close to equilibriu a pipe as a placid and confident figure of authority in a se university starting all over again as a new boy, a fresher, a nobody

It is natural for people to despise the very idea of Oxford and Caant and remote, the Ancient Universities, as they conceitedly style themselves, seem to embody the irrelevant, archaic,so hard to shed And Oxbridge doesn't fool anybody with all that flannel about 'meritocracy' and 'excellence' Are we supposed to be iive themselves? Fellows and stewards and deans and dons and proctors and praelectors And as for the students, or undergraduates undergraduates, I beg their pompous pardons

Many people, but especially I think the young, see pretension and perfor and posturing in every gesture If they were to walk down Trinity Street in Ca term time they would encounter youthful men and women that it would be very easy to characterize as self-conscious poseurs or play-acting pricks Oh, they think they're so so intellectual; oh, they think they're intellectual; oh, they think they're so so Brideshead Revisited Brideshead Revisited; oh, they think they're so so la cre the cobbles with their arms folded, too cool to touch the handlebars See how they walk along with their head in a book See how they wrap their scarves around their necks with a flick As if we're supposed to be impressed Listen to their drawly public-school voices Or, worse, listen to their fake la cre the cobbles with their arms folded, too cool to touch the handlebars See how they walk along with their head in a book See how they wrap their scarves around their necks with a flick As if we're supposed to be impressed Listen to their drawly public-school voices Or, worse, listen to their fake street street accents Who do they think they are, who do they bloody think they bloody are? Mow the fuckers down accents Who do they think they are, who do they bloody think they bloody are? Mow the fuckers down

Well Quite But iine for a moment that these wanky arsehole poseurs are actually no s just like anybody else, just like ine that they are quite as scared and unsure and hopeful and daft as you and ine that instant contempt and dislike really says ine sole student newly arrived at such a place as Cas of dislike, distrust and fear when looking at the easy and assured second- and third-yearsaround them with all their relaxed confidence and their superior air of assurance and belonging Is of nervous inadequacy by choosing to 'see through' everyone else, by choosing to believe that those around theine finally that without their noticing it they somehow became absorbed and naturalized into the place to such an extent that now, to an outsider, they are the ones who look like arrogant tossers Inside, you can takelike salted snails I know, because I was one, just as you would have been too

It is true that I was a scholar It is true that I was older than my first-year contemporaries True also that I had ht be supposed to be) thannu away froe of seven True too that I had an apparently assured manner and a deep, resonant voice that ed to the place quite as much as the wooden panels, shaved lawns and bowler-hatted porters I concede all that, but it is very important that you understand nonetheless how very scared I was inside I lived, you see, in quivering dread of being at any moment found out found out No, it wasn't my status as a convicted criminal on probation that I wanted kept secret, nor aolbird As far as I was concerned those home truths were perfectly fit for broadcast, as wasof that nature No, the terror that gripped e was all about ht to be there My dread was that someone would approach and askonlookers, orical Imperatives of Kant I would prevaricate and palter in e, such stratageination) gleefully i laughter: 'Excuse me, but do you even knoho Lermontov is is?' Or Rilke or Hayek or Saussure or sonorance of which would reveal the awful shallowness of my so-called education

At any ht that ly awarded, that there had been a enius called Simon Frey or Steven Pry had been cheated of their proper place A relentless public inquisition would follohich I would be exposed as a dull-witted fake who had no business at a serious university I could even picture the cereates, slinking away to the sound of jeers and whistles An institution like Cae was for other people, insiders, club megerating, and perhaps I ahts truly did spin around in ht to be a Caraduate, and that this truth would soon beco with academic and intellectual deficiencies that would reveal me to be entirely unworthy of matriculation

Part of the reason I felt all this is because I think I had a raduates I believed in it completely I worshi+pped it I had chosen it above Oxford or any other university becausebecause ofoh dear, there is no way of explaining this without sounding appallingly precious

My favourite twentieth-century author in those days was E M Forster I hero-worshi+pped hie Apostles and their associated Bloomsbury satellites Goldsworthy Lowes dickinson and Lytton Strachey as well as the more illustrious planets in that systeenstein I admired especially the cult of personal relations that Forster espoused His view that friendshi+p, warmth and honesty between people mattered more than any cause or any system of belief was for me a practical as well as a romantic ideal

'I hate the idea of causes,' he wrote, 'and if I had to choose between betraying uts to betray my country' That claim, from an essay called 'What I Believe' and published in his collection Two Cheers for Democracy Two Cheers for Democracy, was taken by soroup later known as the Cae Spies, it may be easy to see why such a credo still causes unease He knew that, of course, for he went on to write: Such a choice may scandalise the modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police It would not have shocked Dante, though Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of hell because they had chosen to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome

I kno insufferably awful I e because of the Bloomsbury Group and a parcel of poofy old bien-pensant bien-pensant writers and traitors, but there we are It wasn't because of Peter Cook and John Cleese and the tradition of comedy, much as I admired that, nor was it because of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin and the tradition of science, e's beauty as a university town had some influence, I suppose I saw it before I ever saw Oxford, and it pierced my heart in a way that first love always does But it really was, pretentious as it may sound, the intellectual and the ethical tradition that appealed to ed from a monstrous youth, you must remee to cleanse me writers and traitors, but there we are It wasn't because of Peter Cook and John Cleese and the tradition of comedy, much as I admired that, nor was it because of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin and the tradition of science, e's beauty as a university town had some influence, I suppose I saw it before I ever saw Oxford, and it pierced my heart in a way that first love always does But it really was, pretentious as it may sound, the intellectual and the ethical tradition that appealed to ed from a monstrous youth, you must remee to cleanse e produces martyrs and Oxford burns them' I honestly cannot remember if that phrase is my own or whether I borrowed it from somebody else: I see, of course Anyway, it is true that Martyrs' Me of the three Cah Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer in the city of Oxford There has always been a sense that Oxford is a worldly, political and establish in hue isin mathematics and science Certainly Oxford has provided Britain with twenty-six pried only fifteen It is indicative too that Oxford was the Royalist headquarters during the English Civil War while Cahold; indeed Oliver Croe alue, Cavalier Oxford This pattern is repeated in theology the tractarian OxfordRoe are low to the point of being evangelical

This same doctrinal distinction is even to be seen in comedy, mad as that may sound Robert Hewison (an Oxonian) in his excellent book Monty Python: The Case Against Monty Python: The Case Against sho the great Pythons were divided along Oxford and Cainia Woolf had noted fifty years earlier how Cae breeds them taller than Oxford) Cleese, Chapic, sarcasm, cruelty and verbal play while the Oxonians Jones and Palin armer, sillier and arets running over a hill!' Jones est, to which Cleese would coldly riposte, 'Why?' sho the great Pythons were divided along Oxford and Cainia Woolf had noted fifty years earlier how Cae breeds them taller than Oxford) Cleese, Chapic, sarcasm, cruelty and verbal play while the Oxonians Jones and Palin armer, sillier and arets running over a hill!' Jones est, to which Cleese would coldly riposte, 'Why?'

The creative tension between those two in particular, according to Hewison, forht see the sae's Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller and Oxford's Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett It is more than possible that you find the cuddly Dudley and the even cuddlier Alan Bennett and Michael Palin muchCae counterparts And perhaps this extends down to the later incarnations Oxford's Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis are shorter and surely sweeter than the lofty and fractious Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie

Cableknit Pullover, Part 1

The backlit ears of Hugh Laurie, gentleman

Cableknit Pullover, Part 2

There is tremendous romance in the cavalier tradition and absolutely none in the puritan Oscar Wilde was an Oxford reat part of me is deeply drawn to the Oxford of the aestheticSpires But the pull of Caer; Forster's world e years and thenceforward it was Caoes so, perhaps, why I was so nervous about being found out It was obvious to e, the Mecca of the Mind, would be filled with the most intellectually accoanic cheer, and classicists would know the laws of thermodynamics and the poetry of Empson I was unworthy

I would have had to be epically delusional or truly, nize such insecurities for what they were: a e was, allied to lashi+ngs of the worst kind of late adolescent solipsistic angst I had never fitted in at school and, now that I was coned to suit me, suppose I turned out to be unable to fit in there too? What did that say aboutto contemplate

But the first teeks at a university are designed, which is to say they have evolved, to enforce the realization ast freshers that everybody is in the sa will be fine Besides which, after a few days I had h conversations to realize that Cae was far from fifth-century Athens or fifteenth-century Florence

University life begins with the Freshers' Fair and all kinds of 'squashes' recruitment parties thrown by student clubs and societies What with the comparatively healthy bank balance of a student in the first week of their academic year on the one hand and that keen desire to be accepted and loved that flows from all the insecurities I have described on the other, it is likely that a fresher will join any nuroups in their first week, froazine and the Cae Union, to the weird the Friends of the Illulers Against Racisazine and the Cae Union, to the weird the Friends of the Illulers Against Racise and Class I suppose I a to have to stop off here and explain in the briefest and siiate life at Cae Only Oxford has a comparable system, and there is no reason why anyone should understand hoorks without having lived inside it And, of course, no reason why anyone should care Unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing, even if those corners are as uncool as the cloisters of Oxbridge

There are twenty-five Caes (well thirty-one in all, but two of those are for postgraduates and the other four only acceptinstitution with its own history, incoest, with 700 undergraduate students It is also the wealthiest of all Oxbridge colleges, worth hundreds ofland everywhere Others are poorer: in the fifteenth century Queens' was a big supporter of King Richard III, whose boar's head device still flies froe banners, and it consequently suffered fro that unfortunate e has a hall for dining, a chapel, a library, senior and junior coe They are mostly medieval in fabric and they are all overnance They are entered by towered gateways and laid out in lawned and cobbled courts (at Oxford these are called quads) You would not design an educational establish these peculiar lines, and indeed no one ever has Yet for over 800 years the two collegiate universities have run continuously without a break and there has been no cause to change the fundah the slowest and radual evolution Whether Oxford and Cae can survive the envy, resentuess It is perfectly possible that someone will attach to them the hideous word 'inappropriate' or the hideous phrase 'not fit for purpose' and they will be turned into e centres or hotels No one can stop the historic, however, and without vandalis physically beautiful either Those two qualities alone will ensure that, coo to the considered elitist

An Oxbridge student is given a place, not by the university, but by his or her college and it is there that they will live and take their instruction in the fore are called supervisions The average nue is about 300 When I arrived at Queens' in October 1978, there were five others reading English in y, and two others dropped out altogether No es, runs the faculties (History, Philosophy, Law, Classics, Medicine and so on) with their tenured readers, lecturers and professors In lish Literature Fellows (or 'dons') ere also attached to the university's English faculty, although it is perfectly possible to be a Felloithin a college, taking supervisions and teaching undergraduates and yet be without a faculty post Oh lord, this is so co over

Look at it this way You live and eat in your college and attend supervisions arranged by the dons in your college for which your write essays, but you go to lectures and are ultimately exae There is no cas, lecture theatres, exaes are like Hogwarts houses, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw and so on? I have a horrible feeling it aret and St Bernard is one of the oldest in the university It is also one of the prettiest, with a divine half-ti medieval Hall, all done over by Thoht of the late pre-Raphaelite period, and a fae that spans the River Cae with the new When I arrived in 1978 Queens' was still an all-e, started taking 's and Clare had beenon in much the way it had for more than half a millennium Incidentally, the apostrophe after the 's' is there on account of it being founded by two queens, Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville In Le Keux's of St Margaret and St Bernard is one of the oldest in the university It is also one of the prettiest, with a divine half-ti medieval Hall, all done over by Thoht of the late pre-Raphaelite period, and a fae that spans the River Cae with the new When I arrived in 1978 Queens' was still an all-e, started taking 's and Clare had beenon in much the way it had for more than half a millennium Incidentally, the apostrophe after the 's' is there on account of it being founded by two queens, Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville In Le Keux's Mee, which I am sure you have read, but I will re in about 1840, spells the nae, and appends a footnote: A custoe, as being the foundation of two queens This appears to us an unnecessary refineainst it, who always calls his college 'Collegiuinae' is of course Latin for 'of the Queen', in the singular God, I sound like a guide book Not surprising, as I'e website Anyway, there you are

As the only English scholar in my year I had been allocated a rather fabulous set of roo the President's Gardens That's another idiosyncratic Oxbridge nonsense the titles given to heads of houses Some are Masters or Mistresses, others are Wardens, Provosts, Principals or Rectors and a few, as is the case with Queens', are styled President

On the day I arrived I stood at the bottom of my staircase and for tenproof that, for the tiraduate You see, each staircase has at its entrance a wooden board on which are hand-painted the na within Next to each na block of wood that obscures or reveals the words IN and OUT, so that when a student (or Fellow, for the dons have rooe too) passes the board on their way to or fronal their presence or absence to an anxious and expectant world I was happily flicking my block of wood back and forth and would still have been doing so to this very day if the sound of approaching footsteps hadn't sentup to my rooms

I had arrived that afternoon with a collection of carefully chosen books, a typewriter, a gramophone, a pile of records, some posters and a bust of Shakespeare, all of which were soon disposed about the rooeraduate sets are coyp-rooe servant: the oing to get side-tracked with Oxbridge ain, I promise I kno o out later for coffee, milk and other staples For the moment I was content to sit alone but for two dozen or so invitations carefully laid out on my desk In the days before eed by notes left in a student's pigeonhole in the porter's lodge If someone wanted to contact you it was e there than to have the fag of cli it under your door I had already gone down to the porter's lodge three times in the last hour to see if any ed and colour-coded according to undergraduate year Thus a club or society could undertake aHence the quantity of paper spread out on , political or religious societies I had instantly throay, but I had grouped together invitations froazines and journals What about the Cae University Gay Society? I was undecided about this I liked the idea of pinninginvolved in anything ca or strident In those days I was a ure politically In the jargon of the day, my consciousness was unawakened

Invitations to sherry parties held by the college's Senior Tutor, by the Dean of Chapel and by an entirely different person also clai the title of Dean were not to be refused, I was told Also essential was a gathering in the roolish Felloas to be, it seemed, my Director of Studies The old e e Matriculation Dinner, a formal event in which the entire intake of first-years would be officially received and enrolled as e

And so I es In A C Spearing's rooether in the first week, accompanied each other to assorted squashes and introductory lectures, swapped second-hand gossip and sized each other up academically, intellectually, socially and in one or two cases I suppose, sexually We were very typical of our generation We knew T S Eliot backwards but could barely quote a line of Spenser or Dryden between us With the exception of one of our number ould have looked like, to an outside observer, as prize a parcel of punchably pompous and buttoned-up arseholes as ever was assee-trousered, leather-jacketed, henna-haired youth called Dave Huggins He looked like the kind of punk rocker you would cross the King's Road in Chelsea to avoid Despite being far and away the friendliest and roup he scared the hell out ofinvoice and apparently confident manner seemed to appeal to hi

For all his forbidding street aspect, Dave had been to school at Radley, one of the slish Literature intake had been privately educated Unsure of ourselves and nervous of being found acadeine how alarly at ho fro men and women who had never before stayed away from home and never before met public-school product en masse Some months later a student who had been educated at a comprehensive in south-east London told id' id! That's jarst say gid!' Eventually he realized that it was how the upper ood' He observed how strange it was for him to be in the minority Some 3 per cent of the population received private education in those days and here he was one of the great 97 per cent, but soatecrashed a Hunt Ball No ht have presented itself as a purely academic institution whose only criterion for entry was academic, the dominant accent to be heard was public school It took a very special kind of self-belief and strength of character not to feel angry or out of place in such an environment

I have no idea what kind of figure I cut Well, no that's not true I aure I cut My typical mode of dress was a Harris tweed jacket with leather buttons, Viyella shi+rt and knitted tie, V-neck lareen and brown half-brogue shoes polished to a high gloss With my trademark flop of hair and a pipe clamped between my teeth I looked like what I of course had been all the previous year, an assistantof the air of a Second World War back-rooave it certainly wasn't that of a hip young rocker in the age of The Clash and The damned

Chess, Classics, Classical Co It turned out that Queens' did indeed have two deans, a Dean of Chapel, and a Dean in charge of discipline At each of the first-week decanal sherry parties I foundinto conversation with a first-year called Ki Richard Burton and radiated a powerful mixture of severity, secrecy, relish and surprise that I could not but find intriguing Likeon the one handan uneht to be He was educated, I soon discovered, at Bolton School, an independent day school that a generation or two earlier had thrown Ian McKellen at Carateful world Kim had come to Queens' to read Classics He dressed rather like ues and V-necks of the purest and priciest cash absurd, which is a very great human skill indeed We beca can We did not consider going to any party or event except in each other's coay?' I asked him quite early on

'Let's just say that I knohat I like,' was his pri blond Richard Burton

Aside from his proficiency at Latin and Greek Kim had another skill and at a level of brilliance that seemed to me to be quite superhuman He was a chess Master At Bolton he had played with, and to so well known as the greatest prodigy England had ever produced At the age of ten Short had beaten the great Viktor Korchnoi and now at fourteen was on the verge of becoest International Master in history Kih to play blindfold, a trick I never tired of urging hiht of the board he would demolish all comers