- CHAPTER THREE -

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

WITH MY CLASSICAL education at St Paul's School I had always assumed I was destined for Oxford or Cambridge. In those days, colleges grouped together to set the scholarship examination, and I was entered for the group at Oxford consisting of St John's, Worcester and, from memory, Hertford. Worcester offered me a scholarship and I began there in 1962, not taking the gap year that would become the norm later on.

For most of my contemporaries, Oxford is a place remembered with warm nostalgia. I am not sure we enjoyed it at the time with the warmth given by hindsight. After all, that was where we changed from boys to men, inevitably a somewhat painful process. Of course, the previous year had seen the departure of the last group who came up as fully fledged adults, having completed their two years' National Service. But we were a group of fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds eager to taste what life might have to offer.

Worcester College had traditionally been dominated by boys from the old public boarding schools - no girls until many years later. I recently attended a college reunion of my contemporaries and the Provost, Dick Smethurst, started his welcome speech with the reminder that today 'only half of you would have been here'. But although girls were not admitted until many years later, the public school character of the college was now changing with an influx of boys from the grammar schools of the state sector - comprehensive schools were not yet invented.

Although I spent far too much time on the rugby, football and cricket fields to participate in Oxford politics, I did stand for my first elected office - Secretary of the Junior Common Room - and won. Anthony May, now Sir Anthony May, a Lord Justice of Appeal, was elected President. The next year I stood for President and lost but learnt a fundamental political lesson. My main opponent was involved in Oxford Labour politics and was always going to maximise the ex-grammar school northern vote. Although I didn't share many of their political views, the ex-boarding school public schoolboys were more or less for me. Sadly, a third candidate decided to stand whose constituency was pretty much the same as mine. He came third but took enough votes from me to stop me winning. So a key lesson was learnt for later life. You will lose a first-past-the-post election if the natural vote for you is split.

A kaleidoscope of memories remain from my Oxford days. Drinking far too much port and sherry; in those days no one drank wine. Indeed, to this day I cannot drink a glass of port; even the smell makes me gag. Being taken out by Chris Haskins, now Lord Haskins, who later ran Northern Foods and became Tony Blair's deregulation czar. For the first and only time in my life I drank anise, which made my legs buckle. Chris to this day swears he has never been drunker. As I woke with no hangover or any other apparent side effect I realised what a dangerous drink it is and why the French used to ban absinthe. Being able to sing the whole score of Bernstein's West Side Story with chums without prompting. Playing cricket in The Parks for the university. In my first year as twelfth man the legendary Nawab of Pataudi made me sit for six hours in his new pads to break them in. In my second year I took a number of wickets against the counties but narrowly failed to win a blue against Cambridge. Losing the rugby cuppers final against Trinity College by a solitary try, scored by Mike Hogan, who went on to fame as an Olympic athlete. Meeting the elderly philosopher Bertrand Russell at a friend's house during one vacation. He had come to discuss plans for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, of which he was a leading proponent. Watching Churchill's funeral in the college television room and crying when the cranes along the Thames dipped in tribute as his coffin passed up river. The mists of autumn, the chilliness of spring, as well as the warm smell of summer grass. In our case we also had the big freeze of 1963, when snow and ice paralysed the country for the best part of three months. Unfortunately for us, the freezing of all lavatory pipes coincided one night with an attack of food poisoning for everyone who had eaten the college dinner. So no diarrhoea could be flushed away for days.

The college dons were of course integral to our lives. The legendary Sir John Masterman had just retired as Provost. He appeared from time to time as a shadowy elderly figure on the touchline supporting a Worcester rugby or soccer team. It was some years later that we learnt of his key role during the Second World War as a recruiter of secret agents and a key player in what became MI6.

Sir John's replacement as Provost was Oliver Franks, who arrived at the same time as I came up as an undergraduate. Lord Franks came with a fearsome reputation as diplomat, businessman and academic. I believe he was the first man to have headed two Oxbridge colleges. As Secretary of the Junior Common Room I had some dealings with the Provost, although his somewhat stiff manner did not immediately endear him to undergraduates. His wife was a much warmer character. Nevertheless, I remember his final advice to me as he shook me by the hand in farewell: 'My advice to you, Tim, is change your job every ten years. That's what I have done and it has served me well.'

He was certainly the man governments turned to if they wanted a detailed inquiry that would not be a whitewash but would not be overcritical.

Harry Pitt was Dean of the college, responsible, I suppose, for our behaviour and moral welfare. I later came to suspect that he had taken on Sir John Masterman's role as a secret agent recruiter, although he never approached me. A modern historian by subject, Harry was good at keeping in touch with former undergraduates of all persuasions, including Rupert Murdoch, who had been at the college reading philosophy, politics and economics in the 1950s. Harry told me years later that when Murdoch was contemplating buying the Times and Sunday Times newspapers in 1981 he asked Harry for advice. 'I really don't believe the British establishment will let me do this.'

'I am sure they will,' Harry told me he replied. 'They are desperate to keep the newspaper alive.'

I always found Harry easy to deal with, although Petronella Wyatt suggests that he could be rude and acerbic. She alleges that in 1986 she ran away from Worcester in her second week when, in a tuition class, she fluffed a French translation and Harry said to her, 'Do you Thatcherites not do French or are you just stupid?'

But the most influential figure for me was the young law tutor Francis Reynolds. His encyclopaedic knowledge, attention to detail and challenges in argument inspired us all, as the subsequent success of countless of his pupils in the two branches of the legal profession provides testament. As an undergraduate and in his subsequent BCL he had been rivalled by the brilliant South African lawyer Lennie Hoffman, who went on to fame at the Bar and in the judiciary. Did Francis actually say to us or did I dream he said that the only reason Lennie Hoffman got better marks than him in the BCL was because he was Jewish and worked over the Christmas holidays? I certainly did not dream a conversation in my third year when he suggested I should go to the Bar rather than become a solicitor. I do not remember the reason I gave him for not changing my mind. I do remember what I thought: I would never be good enough on my feet to perform in court. After forty-five years in politics maybe I was wrong.

It would be inappropriate to leave my school and university days without reference to the cloud that hung over our family. My father was what in those days was called a manic depressive, but today would be described as bipolar. Understanding of and sympathy for mental illness was rare. Treatment consisted either of electric shock therapy or drugs that left the patient in a zombie-like condition. Having had electric shock therapy once, my father resisted attempts to have further treatment as he was traumatised by the shocks he had been given.

Only those who have had the experience of a manic depressive relation will understand the impact on family life. Wide mood swings went from manic behaviour to normality and then to depression. With hindsight, the manic episodes were amusing - standing outside our neighbour's house and shouting 'Come out, you queer'; obtaining a meeting with the Lord Chancellor to complain that he was being pursued by Russian spies; and endless extravagance with money.

I was made aware of my father's illness at the age of twelve. Indeed, his behaviour could hardly be hidden from me as I grew up. Until then, my mother had protected me from any awareness of the reality of his illness. When episodes were out of control I was sent to stay with my aunt or grandparents. When I was six things were so bad that I was sent to stay with my aunt in Northumberland for an entire term, which I spent at a primary school in Morpeth. My classmates clearly thought of me as an effete southerner and I was bullied from time to time.

Whether my father's illness was genetic or caused by his upbringing I know not. I suspect the latter as neither my brother nor I have been afflicted. He certainly can't have been helped by his relationship with his mother, who once, in my presence, turned to him and said, 'Oh Leonard, it's such a pity it was Brian who was killed in the war rather than you.' His younger brother Brian had been killed as a Fleet Air Arm pilot in the invasion of...