Sociology was my preoccupation, as I returned to London from the
Cambridge Union Debating Tour in January 1960 - Julian Grenfell and I travelled in the state grandeur of the great liner the United States - she was still battling with La France for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic - soon after that, when civilian aircraft had developed the ability to fly direct New York/London without a stop-over at Shannon, the Atlantic sea-journeys were superseded, and were abandoned.
I had resolved to abandon Trinity Cambridge and join the London School of Economics to study for a Sociology PhD - Professor Duncan MacRae was my mentor and tutor - I approached LSE as the home of the "new" science that would bring order into my understanding of the world - the study of History had not met my demands for a discipline with contemporary relevance - "Sociology", I passionately believed, represented the Holy Grail of academic life - and life was great at LSE, more contact with other nations, the excitement of London, and lots of sex - at last.
Money was a problem - I was now approaching 25 years of age, life in London was inevitably becoming more expensive - my parents could not afford to assist me further - so I needed part-time jobs that would let me study - I worked both as a TV interviewer for Anglia TV and then as a Research Officer at University College London, at the Centre for Urban Studies
As a TV interviewer every Monday I would drive up from London to Norwich, complete two magazine programmes (one live, one recorded) and drive back in the evening - under London University regulations (which then still aped Oxford and Cambridge) students were not allowed to stay away from London overnight during term-time - it was an 20-hour day with punishing driving, particularly in winter - the job fell vacant when David Frost (a fellow performer in the Cambridge Footlights) was dismissed for writing an excellent whistle-blowing article in the old Liberal magazine Time and Tide - he disclosed the scale of Anglia TV's profits - the company's
entire capital investment had been recouped within twelve months, he wrote - later, the Canadian Roy (Lord) Thomson was to be feted for his brilliance in declaring ITV to be a "licence to print money" - but David Frost got the sack.
I also worked as Research Officer at the Centre for Urban Studies, University College London, answering to its imperious Director, Ruth Glass. The processes of urbanisation has always been a fascination of mine - people come alive in cities, cities have always been in the forefront of civilisation, new perceptions - we all spark off each other - high-density life brings out the best and worst in everyone - I am a living example of the new Homo Sapiens high-density man - whatever people say, most people enjoy the sheer busy-ness and drive of city life.
I loved my work at the Centre for Urban Studies - my project was to find out how post-war "comprehensive redevelopment" affected the residents of North Kensington, more precisely the Golborne Ward - I was in charge of a team of 40 Gallup interviewers - this work brought me into contact again with Michael Young, Director of the Institute for Community Studies in Bethnal Green (Lord Young of Dartington), who showed me
how new institutions were to created, fashioned and promoted - that is a central perception of my life, and one which I seek to pass on to others - our social environment is itself composed of organisational constructs, and are they open to creative influence and the generation of new constructs - new systems, new organisations, new "institutions" - all that emerged from the experience of sociology at
LSE, in particular studies of Max Weber. Another working contact at that time was the Gallup Poll Manager Andrew
MacKintosh - now Lord Mackintosh, former Labour Leader in the Lords.
But there was a downside. Sociology lost its magic for me - the glamour evaporated - the number-crunching quantitative sociology in which I had believed, came apart in my hands. I was forced to recognise the insubstantial nature of the questionnaire-based data that I was handling - it was my job to sanitise the raw data and pass it upwards in neat tables be written up into academic articles. The final product seemed free of all the originating defects, but I knew they were there. I lost all interest in the subject.
Given that loss of confidence there could be no question of my pursuing the academic career that I had, if only half-heartedly, intended - I thought about returning to an academic career in History - but too many boats had been burned. Even though I done well in History, and "got my First" - I knew in my heart I was not a true historian - more of a logician and a linguist - perhaps not a true academic either - for me, the academic bubble had burst - I moved to the Bar, and proceeded to make myself into a practising Barrister.
Call to the Bar was not quite so difficult as it sounds - over the years, to please my father, I had kept up the process of "eating dinners" at Grays Inn - many of my Bar exams were already under my belt, certainly the whole of Part I - all that had been done by corespondence course throughout my National Service and Cambridge years, and had brought a real closeness between my father and myself - I was pursuing his dream subject, preparing for his profession - I had only to deliver one concentrated few months of study, and sit my Finals - then be "called to the Bar".
That is what I did , returning to my parents' home in Cardiff, alongside the great Edwardian Roath Park, to cut costs and devote myself to study
Romance has loomed much larger in these memories than I ever thought it would - for me, that's quite a revelation - this was certainly a period of intense romance - moving to Cardiff, there continued a deep and preoccupying affair from London - no names,no pack drill, but (I suspect) the only complete infatuation of my life, a storm which blew itself out. And I met my wife-to-be, Elizabeth for the first time, when she became my parents' lodger, while teaching History at Cardiff High School for Girls - the first infatuation obscured the significance of meeting Elizabeth - we did not get it together first time around - Elizabeth married someone else, and we did not meet up again until 1966, when she had been divorced - and we married straight away.
How did we meet? My father was an inveterate "small landlord" - he rented-out a single ground-floor room, as well as the top-floor of our big three-storey house - he was of a generation that had no pension arragnements - indeed, "retirement" was a strange concept to him - he worked full-time at his job in Cardiff Docks until the age of 82. For him property was his pension, his reassurance against incapacity in old age - after all, he was already 21 in 1908, when the Old Age Pension was introduced .
I was called to the Bar in 1962 - at a Grays Inn Dinner at which my father (then aged 75) presided - he was the longest-called rank-and-file member, and those were the "rules of the House" - he had been called himself in 1915, in the same Great Hall in Grays Inn - the Welsh Inn - it gave him great satisfaction to preside, as the oldest Member present at my Call - I seemed to be settling down at last to a sensible, straightforward professional career - well, almost.
Next PageBack to 1954-1956, Page Eight
Sociology was my preoccupation, as I returned to London from the
Cambridge Union Debating Tour in January 1960 - Julian Grenfell and I travelled in the state grandeur of the great liner the United States - she was still battling with La France for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic - soon after that, when civilian aircraft had developed the ability to fly direct New York/London without a stop-over at Shannon, the Atlantic sea-journeys were superseded, and were abandoned.
I had resolved to abandon Trinity Cambridge and join the London School of Economics to study for a Sociology PhD - Professor Duncan MacRae was my mentor and tutor - I approached LSE as the home of the "new" science that would bring order into my understanding of the world - the study of History had not met my demands for a discipline with contemporary relevance - "Sociology", I passionately believed, represented the Holy Grail of academic life - and life was great at LSE, more contact with other nations, the excitement of London, and lots of sex - at last.
Money was a problem - I was now approaching 25 years of age, life in London was inevitably becoming more expensive - my parents could not afford to assist me further - so I needed part-time jobs that would let me study - I worked both as a TV interviewer for Anglia TV and then as a Research Officer at University College London, at the Centre for Urban Studies
As a TV interviewer every Monday I would drive up from London to Norwich, complete two magazine programmes (one live, one recorded) and drive back in the evening - under London University regulations (which then still aped Oxford and Cambridge) students were not allowed to stay away from London overnight during term-time - it was an 20-hour day with punishing driving, particularly in winter - the job fell vacant when David Frost (a fellow performer in the Cambridge Footlights) was dismissed for writing an excellent whistle-blowing article in the old Liberal magazine Time and Tide - he disclosed the scale of Anglia TV's profits - the company's
entire capital investment had been recouped within twelve months, he wrote - later, the Canadian Roy (Lord) Thomson was to be feted for his brilliance in declaring ITV to be a "licence to print money" - but David Frost got the sack.
I also worked as Research Officer at the Centre for Urban Studies, University College London, answering to its imperious Director, Ruth Glass. The processes of urbanisation has always been a fascination of mine - people come alive in cities, cities have always been in the forefront of civilisation, new perceptions - we all spark off each other - high-density life brings out the best and worst in everyone - I am a living example of the new Homo Sapiens high-density man - whatever people say, most people enjoy the sheer busy-ness and drive of city life.
But there was a downside. Sociology lost its magic for me - the glamour evaporated - the number-crunching quantitative sociology in which I had believed, came apart in my hands. I was forced to recognise the insubstantial nature of the questionnaire-based data that I was handling - it was my job to sanitise the raw data and pass it upwards in neat tables be written up into academic articles. The final product seemed free of all the originating defects, but I knew they were there. I lost all interest in the subject.
Given that loss of confidence there could be no question of my pursuing the academic career that I had, if only half-heartedly, intended - I thought about returning to an academic career in History - but too many boats had been burned. Even though I done well in History, and "got my First" - I knew in my heart I was not a true historian - more of a logician and a linguist - perhaps not a true academic either - for me, the academic bubble had burst - I moved to the Bar, and proceeded to make myself into a practising Barrister.
Call to the Bar was not quite so difficult as it sounds - over the years, to please my father, I had kept up the process of "eating dinners" at Grays Inn - many of my Bar exams were already under my belt, certainly the whole of Part I - all that had been done by corespondence course throughout my National Service and Cambridge years, and had brought a real closeness between my father and myself - I was pursuing his dream subject, preparing for his profession - I had only to deliver one concentrated few months of study, and sit my Finals - then be "called to the Bar".
That is what I did , returning to my parents' home in Cardiff, alongside the great Edwardian Roath Park, to cut costs and devote myself to study
Romance has loomed much larger in these memories than I ever thought it would - for me, that's quite a revelation - this was certainly a period of intense romance - moving to Cardiff, there continued a deep and preoccupying affair from London - no names,no pack drill, but (I suspect) the only complete infatuation of my life, a storm which blew itself out. And I met my wife-to-be, Elizabeth for the first time, when she became my parents' lodger, while teaching History at Cardiff High School for Girls - the first infatuation obscured the significance of meeting Elizabeth - we did not get it together first time around - Elizabeth married someone else, and we did not meet up again until 1966, when she had been divorced - and we married straight away.
How did we meet? My father was an inveterate "small landlord" - he rented-out a single ground-floor room, as well as the top-floor of our big three-storey house - he was of a generation that had no pension arragnements - indeed, "retirement" was a strange concept to him - he worked full-time at his job in Cardiff Docks until the age of 82. For him property was his pension, his reassurance against incapacity in old age - after all, he was already 21 in 1908, when the Old Age Pension was introduced .
I was called to the Bar in 1962 - at a Grays Inn Dinner at which my father (then aged 75) presided - he was the longest-called rank-and-file member, and those were the "rules of the House" - he had been called himself in 1915, in the same Great Hall in Grays Inn - the Welsh Inn - it gave him great satisfaction to preside, as the oldest Member present at my Call - I seemed to be settling down at last to a sensible, straightforward professional career - well, almost.