No wonder I, like so many, remember my University years as the happiest of my life. Once the complete strangeness of it all had passed it was like walking out of a dark room onto a high and windblown downland path. Life, suddenly, was what you made it, not what someone made for you.
Other than a reputation for being a useful all-rounder I did not really have much to offer Cambridge but if I were being kind to myself I would say that someone had spotted unrealised potential when they offered me a place to study the Modern History tripos. Then, as now, there were advantages for some in failing to get to University and sometimes thereby stealing a march in the workplace on those who spent three years or more as a student, but in my case three years at Cambridge were the making of the rest of my life. There I met and fell in love with Judy Hayman, my future wife, although not until my final days in residence, which enabled me to plough my own cheerful furrow while I continued the process of growing, as it were, to my full height.
In the three years leading to my last minute invitation to Judy to come with me to the May Ball at her father’s old college, St.John’s, in June 1967 (life at Cambridge sometimes seemed like a fantasy so May week was, as Clive James has observed, naturally, in June) I learned to discipline my writing. Infinitely more than that, I broadened my knowledge of much more than Modern History, the subject in which I somehow emerged with a 2.1 and an MA.
All things are relative but the many bright and industrious school leavers who do not get even a sniff of Oxford or Cambridge these days would, quite rightly, feel infuriated that I should have been offered a place at both the great universities of England on the basis of two A levels, neither of them in the top grade. Both offers were conditional on my passing Elementary Maths O level, which I had failed twice.
I managed it with ease after leaving school, thanks largely to a retired colonial servant called Laurence Edwards, who lived at Dorking and made it all seem very simple. He encouraged me to write my own handwritten book of geometrical theorems, entitled something like ‘The Golden Treasury of Knowledge’. It said little for my previous Maths teachers and even less for myself that I had believed it all to be so difficult. Yet I can understand how some people can actually find beauty in Maths because I still remember my delight when one of my St. Bede’s Maths teachers (Mr. Hilary-Smith, whose other main attribute was having a beautiful daughter named Magnolia) taught me algebraic equations that I actually understood and found easy. Edwards told me that detectives are taught algebra and geometry to help their brains take logical steps from one point to another. Suddenly I came to see the purpose of it all, but I still envy those who find Maths easy. Even supposedly great economists do not always do so. A journalist acquaintance of mine happened to share a train carriage with Lord (Nigel) Lawson, the distinguished former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, so he claimed at least, spent the whole of a longish journey wrestling with the easiest Su Doko puzzle in his newspaper.
I would have been quite pleased with a second class second and not surprised if it had been a third. The higher grading had not the slightest effect on my subsequent career, but it had two advantages. I could pretend, fooling nobody and strictly in jest, that I had narrowly missed a first; and I could claim parity with the tubby little bespectacled fellow from Kendal in Cumbria who had sat the tripos with me amongst a small group of historians accepted by Fitzwilliam College in 1964. He was quite obviously cleverer than any of us.
David Starkey went on to become the nation’s best known and best paid television historian. Perhaps the examiners thought that he needed taking down a peg or two but he soon became more famous than any of them, even the mighty Geoffrey Elton, uncle of Ben, whose lively lectures had been the greatest attraction for history students in my time and whose books on and around the Tudor Constitution had changed previous opinions of the likes of Henry VIII, Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. It was only when he and I accepted an invitation, from one of the many university societies, to return to Cambridge to discuss current affairs questions from an intellectual audience that I appreciated why he had pursued his calling with such relish despite somehow having failed to get the first in his final year that everyone had expected of him. It did not seem to knock even a puff out of his sails, let alone the wind. He had got firsts in parts one and two and had always spoken as a student as if he were already a don. Tested by a live audience, the adult Starkey, exuding confidence like Toad in his motor car, was sharp, witty and opinionated on any subject raised, while I floundered in the shallow end but raised a few laughs.
Of all the brilliant intellects with whom I have briefly worked in some capacity or other only Clive James or Stephen Fry would have shone with even greater brilliance in the same circumstances. Starkey incidentally is openly homosexual, but at Cambridge in the 1960s his inclination had never crossed my mind. Those with similar genes no doubt recognised each other but I don’t think that the rest of us even noticed.
It would not be true to say that I was as unaware of social class as I was of sexual orientation, because I always had a keen ear for regional accents, but where a person had been to school really did not matter. Public school ‘types’ were in a smallish minority at Fitzbilly anyway – it had been founded originally for those who could not afford to pay the fees – but I’m sure I would have been as much at home in the broad social mix had I accepted an offer from University College at Oxford to read English Literature. That had appealed to me just as much, if not more, than a History course but I had got on well with the Fitzwilliam Tutor for Admissions, Norman Walters, known to the undergraduates as ‘Ron’, when I went to see him as I weighed up my two offers. I did not enjoy the prospect of having to learn Anglo-Saxon, then a compulsory discipline for anyone reading English at Oxford, and I liked the way that the genial Walters stressed the corporate spirit of Fitzwilliam House. Kicking against the increasing trend towards taking in undergraduates solely on their academic ability, Walters, who died much too young a few years later, believed in a broad, eclectic mix and it worked wonderfully well. The Fitzwilliam of my time held a respectable place in academic tables but also won more than its fair share of sporting trophies and produced plays and revues of a relatively high standard from a small and up-to-date theatre. I had fun taking part in two of the revues, entitled, as I recall, If It Fitz and Fitz The Bill.
Fitzwilliam was about to receive full collegiate status and had just moved into new buildings on the Huntingdon Road. To my eye the architect, Denys Lasdun, had created a design of little beauty: low, flat-roofed buildings in a particularly unattractive mud-brown brick encircling what were then immature lawns. But the glass and concrete Hall, especially its striking roof, was light and interesting, foreshadowing his more famous National Theatre. Moreover, like the NT, the buildings worked in practice. Now that new courts have been added and the gardens have grown and matured, ‘Fitz’, as the students call it today, or ‘Billy’, as it was known in my time, is a pleasing place to live and work.
In my first year I regretted only the fact that, with limited accommodation for its expanded intake, the freshmen were posted to digs some way from the college. Mine were at Chesterton Road, which meant endless bicycle rides up the hill to get to meals, playing fields, the library, the chapel (in those days not purpose built) and all other college activities. Lectures on the other hand were more easily accessible, over Magdalene Bridge and down King’s Parade towards the Backs. That was the heart of Cambridge and getting there was a good reason to go to lectures, but I soon learned, alas, that the weekly essays, written for various supervisors in different aspects of the syllabus, were best written with the help of books rather than lecture notes.
My digs overlooked the Cam and what in summer were majestic weeping willows. It was a large and draughty house, however, and my landlady would have given the unreformed Scrooge more than a run for his money. She stuck the plug of the electric fire to the wall with sellotape to discourage unnecessary use of such a luxury as heat. Baths, in a freezing garre
t like the one in which Mimi expired with consumption in La Bohème, had to be applied for in advance. The water was hot but the air around it so cold in winter that one felt for the soap (one’s own, naturally) through a thick fog of steam. Within minutes, moreover, the water in the bath would be lukewarm and any attempt to refill was likely to create a thump on the door and an enraged entreaty not to use up all the hot water.
I made the first of several good Cambridge friends at Chesterton Road: David Martin the future MP for Portsmouth South, and uncle of the Coldplay lead singer Chris, alias Mr. Gwyneth Paltrow. The fact that we were Martin and Martin-Jenkins suggested that the allocation of digs by the College was strictly alphabetical so it was fortunate that we got on so well. We had spacious individual rooms, more expensive than most because of their size and the view. David, reading Law, had right wing views quite out of tune with the swinging sixties but inherited from his father, a staunch rural Conservative who had made his own money running a caravan business near Exeter. He was less energetic than I, although a hard-hitting left-handed fives player who got into the Cambridge team in his last year to claim, with some espousal from me, his coveted membership of the Hawks’ Club. That entitled him to the tie, a status symbol at Westminster if ever there was one. I owe him most for my proper introduction to classical music. The surging climax of Elgar’s Nimrod was my easy way in.
We shared digs in our second year, too, much nearer Fitzwilliam at 14, Priory Street, where our landlady, Mrs. Robinson, was much more hospitable, although not to the extent of her namesake in The Graduate. She cooked her tenants breakfast every day and had a heart of gold rather than cold like her predecessor. Her husband, a retired policeman, kept himself to himself and was more in evidence at night when his snores would resonate through the little house. In a cartoon the walls would have bulged and contracted with every breath.
Priory Street was only a short bicycle ride away from the College’s playing fields at Oxford Road, where excellent cricket, rugby and hockey pitches, not to mention grass tennis courts, were tended by ‘Sarge’ Bemmant, who had a house next door to the pavilion. Cambridge’s flat playing fields were generally marvellous surfaces on which to play any sport and Sarge’s acres were no exception, although, like most groundsmen, he would have been happier if no one had actually played on them at all, especially after rain.
I failed to get a cricket Blue despite playing in three final trials on freezing April days at Fenner’s and I have sometimes wondered if a different selection system in Oxford cricket might have worked better for me than the one then prevailing at Cambridge, whose captain had supreme power of selection but who tended to rely on the necessarily hasty opinions of George Cox during the April nets. George, whom I later got to know a little when we were speaking together at cricket dinners (he was brilliant in that role), only looked closely at my batting once in the April nets in my first year, when I was in one of those apprehensive moods that I often used to have in the nets rather than in the middle. It was cold, someone was bowling quickly at me and I was reluctant to get fully behind the line. Had helmets been around then I suppose I would have shown my capabilities better but I was not surprised that he wrote me off.
The Cambridge captain in my year as a freshman, Raymond White, seemed more interested in my potential. Apart from a one-day game for Cambridge against a Dutch university, in which my rival for an all-rounder’s place, captain for the day, seemed to me to make sure that I batted low in the order and got no chance to bowl, a single three-day game for the Quidnuncs against the University was the only real opportunity to come my way. Fate decreed that I did not take the opportunity. I held a swirling skier but failed to take a wicket in a brief spell of bowling while Cambridge built a total well in excess of 300 on a sunny Saturday. The game resumed on a misty morning on the Monday when the ball swung like a swallow and the Quidnuncs collapsed rapidly. I managed to make batting look impossible as my former school captain, Jonathan Harvey, curved the ball late past my groping edge two or three times before hitting my off stump.
White, who had made his mark indelibly with a century against the 1964 Australians, became one of the more liberal figures amongst white cricket administrators in his native South Africa. Years later he told me that he regretted having not given me a run in the University side. There were a lot of small politics involved in selection and I was not good at selling myself by drinking with the right people. You have to look after yourself in this world to get on, a lesson I learned in those days and perhaps applied to an extent when I got to the BBC. At least I captained Fitzwilliam to its first ever win in Cuppers, the inter-collegiate tournament, got two half-Blues at Rugby fives, made several life-long friends and revelled in the sheer fun of University life.
Several sporting contemporaries were already familiar to readers of newspaper back pages. Mark Cox was Britain’s best tennis player; Mike Gibson was one of the great Rugby Union all-round three-quarters and Deryck Murray, captain of the University in my second year, was already established in the West Indies Test team, a diminutive hero from Port of Spain with a high-pitched voice.
I liked Deryck both then and in occasional meetings in future years but unfortunately for me he refused to change his team during my second year, when belatedly I showed some form for the college and the Crusaders (University second XI). Perhaps he gave cricket too much attention, however, because when it came to the History exams I was, since our names both began with the same letter, seated close enough to him to witness his putting his name at the top of the paper before sighing deeply several times. He wrote nothing further about questions that were clearly on subjects that to him were a total blank. He was duly sent down but he took his studies more seriously at Nottingham and whenever I have seen him since he has been doing something important, such as representing Trinidad and Tobago at the United Nations.
Winning Cuppers in my third season was easily the highlight of my cricket at Cambridge. There was a wonderful spirit in the Billy side that I led, especially in the field. We had several talented players but only one Blue, my friend Vijaya Malalasekera, who has ever afterwards called me ‘Skip’. He played one brilliant innings in the semi-final against St. Catherine’s that helped him to get back into the University team, but we won the final without him, thanks to some steady new ball bowling in particular by Peter Hickson, a great trier who went on to become a captain of industry with such companies as Powergen, Anglia Water and Scottish Power.
I also played hockey for the Billy XI and a final game of rugby for one of the less exalted College teams one afternoon when they were short. I scored a try after a long run when all I had to do was catch the ball and run with it, virtually unopposed. It seemed the right moment to announce my retirement.
It was Rugby fives, however, that took most of my sporting time in the winter months. For me, although I played some squash for the College too, it was more fun than the more commonly played of the small court games, mainly because so much of it was doubles, played by pairs, rather than in singles. Whacking the little white ball round the court with gloved hands was tremendous fun, demanded quick reactions, fitness, good hand-to-eye co-ordination and a rapport with one’s partner. If it was a left-hand/right-hand combination it helped, of course, but both my partners for Cambridge in the University match were, like me, right handers. Chris Bascombe went on to be an actuary, Chris Hirst to become the very successful headmaster first of Kelly College, then of Sedbergh.
Fives and schoolmasters seemed to go together, not least because the president of Cambridge Fives, the remarkable Jock Burnet, founder of the Jesters Club and bursar of Magdalene, played a part in encouraging potential teachers amongst the many undergraduates he befriended. Peter Commings, my first captain, was one of them. Jock was a smallish, sturdy, very quietly spoken man with an owlish look and a quick, dry wit. He had an extraordinary influence without ever pushing anyone into anything against their will. He would get up at five o’clock every morning to write copious lette
rs in a neat hand. Having dealt with the College’s finances and staff matters, he pursued his other interests as a governor of several schools, an expert on Church history and books generally, and mentor to many undergraduates. The sherry parties given every Sunday by Jock and his faithful wife, Pauline, at their house, 28, Selwyn Gardens, were legendary. He was driven by the sort of Christian faith described by Edward Lyttelton as ‘the quiet resolve to believe what you hope may be true before you know that it is’.
My own journey during my Cambridge days to a faith much like that expressed by Lyttelton, as opposed to any evangelical certainty, was encouraged instead by Peter Nott, the chaplain at Fitzwilliam, an excellent preacher who seldom gave a sermon without raising a laugh. I have often used a story he told during one evening service about Field Marshal Montgomery, who allegedly interrupted the lesson that he was reading at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral when he got to the point where the disciples asked Jesus who was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. ‘Jesus said’, intoned the great soldier in a voice echoing down off the dome, ‘and I must say that I am inclined to agree with him.’
As Bishop of Norwich, the one referred to by Princess Diana in a letter as ‘that bloody Bishop’ after a Christmas at Sandringham, Peter Nott’s most valuable contribution may have been to insist that the reforming Church did not try to modernise the Lord’s Prayer as it had so much of the Church’s liturgy. Thanks to his wisdom ‘deliver us from evil’ did not, in most churches, become ‘do not bring us to the time of trial’. Nor were any of the other familiar words altered, as many phrases from Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer have been, to no great purpose and often at the expense of the lovely rhythm of the old language.
Peter told me two stories about one of his earliest services in the Cathedral, held at eight am on a freezing winter’s morning. Blue with cold the new Bishop remarked to one of his oldest choristers that it was not very warm in the vestry. ‘You should feel what it’s like when the central heating isn’t on’ was the veteran’s response. It may or may not have been the same stalwart of whom Peter inquired, at their first meeting, whether he had lived in Norwich all his life? The answer, in broad Norfolk dialect, was precise: ‘not yet’.
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