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starting at Cambridge
1956-1959 Trinity, Cambridge I was a State Scholarship boy - supported generously by an outright State grant which required my father to make only a very small contribution - I could not bear to continue with language studies
- languages had been my life from 1950 to 1956 - I simply had to change - History, my "third subject" at A-Level, became my great love - with my Special Subject, I also tackled the fragile contortions of classical economics, many of which have now collapsed.
I was a "good student", revelling in the one-on-one tutorial tradition which still prevailed
(it was only in Economics, in my final year, that I experienced a shared tutorial, and the magic began to evaporate) - I wrote good essays, scrambled a II.1 in my Part I, then a First in both History
and the Economics papers in my Part II - I was very proud to be made a Senior
Scholar of Trinity on the basis of my Finals. But I did not build upon that
opportunity - the disciplines of academic study seemed to come perhaps too easily to me - for whatever reason, they failed to command my priorities, my real attention.
Above all I performed - at the Cambridge Union, where I rose to Vice-President and ran out of time to become President - with Julian
(now Lord) Grenfell by inheritance, I represented Cambridge on the three-month US Debating Tour of 1959 - at the Footlights (May Balls 1957-1959) I wielded my guitar, so that many of my contemporaries remember me only as a cabaret performer - worked the Cambridge cabaret circuit, in demand at parties - and in the voluntary sector, where I edited Cambridge Opinion.
I also initiated the first mass survey of exam results, published regularly in The Times (then targeted snobbishly at "Top People"...) comparing the differential track records of colleges and schools - my Trinity room in Whewells' Court was overtaken by shoe-boxes and index-cards - that consolidated my interest in sociology, the subject which had not yet entered the Cambridge curriculum. Cambridge Opinion gave me my first managerial, editorial challenge, which I loved - the Editor had to run the whole show, negotiating the print contract and distribution network, writing and
editing - right up
my street.
 Vacations were important - in every short vacation I worked in Cardiff as a car-hire driver for
the firm Glamtax to supplement the Scholarship - wore a maroon uniform and a cap - lauded the generosity
of men and bemoaned the meanness of women, as "tippers" - worked six 10-hour shifts per week, for £6 per week plus about £3 tips, all of which was good money at the time.
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Summer 1957 was spent in France on a blissful car-journey around Northern France studying the French cathedrals with three Trinity same-year friends - Tony Quiney (now lecturing in History of Art, in South London), Tony Stowell (became a History teacher, now retired) and Wyn Williams (teacher, suffered grievous leg amputation
following a sporting accident when teaching in East Africa, died prematurely in his early fifties) - they all became teachers - "business" and the corporate sector simply did not seem an appropriate employment option for any of us, then - my 1958 Summer Vacation was spent in the United States, visiting friends and relatives - returning to the Knowlton in Quebec,
scene of my evacuated youth, and visiting the American doctor Mike Wright, who had been billeted on us before D-Day - weaving the strands of life together.
Plenty of girlfriends at Cambridge, but no sex - this was before the Swinging Sixties, although some would say that they had already begun -
not for me, though - inhibitions supervened, the residue of an all-male boarding-school upbringing, I suspect - coupled with a repressive Chapel background and a self-image as little fat-boy - it was a poisonous cocktail - there was certainly romance - great waves of unrequited love - for me, romance has always been more important than sex - the interplay of masculinity and feminity is my eternal fascination - so let the E-record show
that (as they would now say, I "did a Britney") - I left Cambridge still a virgin, at the age of 24 - I did not get started until the age of 25.
 One of my institutional creations was the Cambridge University Sociological Society, as the lynch-pin of my campaign to introduce the study of sociology to Cambridge - I quickly learnt an entrepreneurial trick - I found that I could make use of the "official" Cambridge University "shield" on my letterheading, simply because there was
nobody to stop me! I simply rustled up some patrons, designed an official-looking letterhead, got it printed and used it - and
nobody challenged me! For every budding entrepreneur, moments like that are golden.
 Politics did not figure seriously in my life at Cambridge - at that stage, I had joined no Party - I was a member the Liberal Club, to please my Liberal father - for a few months, I was its "Librarian", lugging its leaflets from meeting to meeting
- Clement Davies was on the way out, Jo Grimond on the way in - "Party" politics were foreign to me, for there had been none to speak of in Whitchurch, very little at Leighton Park, and certainly none in the Royal Navy - I was certainly no Tory, I knew that - but neither was I Labour at the
Cambridge Union, where Brian Lapping held sway, a smoothly acerbic speaker of
great power - my decision to join the Labour Party came much later, in 1963,
from a new and quite different vantage point
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Back to 1954-1956, Page Six
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