Among those I met....

ADVENTURES OF A LANGUAGE TRAVELLER
An autobiography
JOHN HAYCRAFT
Edited by Michael Woosnam-Mills
Constable • London
1998


Fabled City

Our first speaker was Doctor Joad, reserved as ever except on the platform. We
organised fund-raising dances and a debate between the economist Graham Hutton
and the historian AJP Taylor. I got a lead article on world government into Isis
and a short story I had written in India into Viewpoint magazine. Being published
at Oxford was a triumph. Everyone felt Oxford and Cambridge were cradles for
success, particularly at this time when undergraduates were older, eager to fill
the vacuum left by the war. It was an amazingly élitist group. Among those I met
at Oxford between 1948 and 1951 were Robert Runcie, journalists John Ardagh,
Alan Brien, William Rees-Mogg, Anthony Sampson, Godfrey Smith and Ken
Tynan, politicians Tony Benn, Margaret Thatcher, Jeremy Thorpe and Shirley
Williams, the poet Philip Larkin, novelists Kingsley Amis, Nina Bawden, Sue
Chitty, Thomas Hinde and my cousin Francis King, the critic Martin Seymour-
Smith, John Schlesinger, William Russell, Michael Codron, Alan Cooke, Charles
Hodgson, Michael Croft, Tony Richardson, Peter Parker, Robin Day, Robert
Robinson and Magnus Magnusson. Government grants for those who had done
national service meant there were more non-public-school students. Of 250 Jesus
College undergraduates, only five came from public schools.

It was a fantasy world, perhaps because undergraduates were consciously
making the most of this euphoric period between the circumscriptions of school
and the forces, and the exigencies of a career. One morning Rodney, Rebecca,
Janet and I were walking in the Corn, when Rodney suddenly exclaimed, 'It's as
sunny as a wedding day! Let's get married!' We bought cakes and wine and told
the registration office clerk we wanted to get married at once. I'm sure we would
have gone through with it, but the clerk talked firmly about identity papers and
giving notice. 'It seems unfair people can't get married when they want!'
objected Rodney. The clerk took this seriously and suggested Rodney put it in
writing. We
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