Chapter X

In their small classroom below the miniature rifle range (and not far from Mr Hunt’s digs by the Pang), the History specialists found themselves facing a dark-haired, olive-skinned, slightly stout young man, rather good-looking, with a pointed nose and large brown eyes. He spoke pausingly, choosing his words or his next phrase with care, yet always incisively and directly. This was Richard Hiscocks, newly appointed to take over both English and European history at sixth-form level. He was also form master of the Classical Sixth, since he was to teach English literature at that level, too.

From the outset it was clear that Hiscocks was taking the job - and his pupils - very seriously indeed. He had obviously prepared each lesson carefully beforehand, and his style of teaching was deliberate and lecture-like. There were none of the sallies, badinage, quips and laughter which formed part of Mr Hunt’s classes. Indeed, as we were to find out, if Mr Hiscocks had a fault it was that his sense of humour was a bit limited. Sometimes you could almost see him weighing up a joke he’d been told before deciding whether to laugh or not. To any red herring introduced by a member of the class he would respond courteously for a sentence or two before closing further irrelevance with his famous phrase ‘Still we - er - can’t discuss that now.’ The Classical Sixth had a song, which went to the tune of ‘You Can’t Do That There ’Ere’:

‘Oh, we can’t discuss that now.

Oh, we can’t discuss that now.

Anywhere else we’ll discuss that there,

But we can’t discuss that now.’

Here was a change indeed from the Headmaster’s dilettante, half-informed waffling! You could hardly take notes fast enough as Mr Hiscocks, in his gown and characteristic pose, leaning on the newel-post at the foot of the little flight of stairs which led down into the classroom, talked about Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, or Archbishop Laud and the Covenanters. What with several other people needing them, you had a hell of a job to get hold of all the books he told you to read for your weekly essays. It was easier to buy some of them, like Tanner’s Constitutional Conflicts, since there was usually only one copy of anything in the school library.

The big surprise came when Hiscocks said that he wished to see each of us tête-à-tête, at his own digs, for an hour every week, to return and talk about our essays and discuss our future work and progress. These, in effect, were tutes, as at Oxford or Cambridge. (Oh, wouldn’t Mr Arnold be pleased, I thought: an hour out of prep. once a week!) His subjects for essays were enigmatic and challenging. ‘Is it right that Cromwell’s statue should stand outside the House of Commons?’ ‘“To the King’s [Charles II’s] coming in without conditions can be attributed all the evils of the reign. (Clarendon)” Discuss.’ ‘When examiners ask these questions,’ explained Hiscocks, ‘they’re getting at something in particular. They want to see whether you grasp the vital point and can say - er - what they - er - want you to say.’ Many were the private colloquies and puzzlings over what he wanted us to say: but after a bit we began to get the hang of it.

At the end of the first week he rated me so severely for the poor quality of my essay that he almost had me in tears. ‘I don’t think that represents an adequate standard of work for a sixth-form boy.’ ‘Oh, sir!’ ‘No, I don’t.’ And he proceeded to do something which none of his predecessors had got around to before. He began actually teaching me how to read for, prepare and write a historical essay. I dolefully poured out my heart to Mr Hunt, but he told me it was high time, and would do me nothing but good.

Gradually - very gradually - my essays improved. So did my enthusiasm. I began to realize that my lukewarm application and attention during the previous year had been due largely to the tepid quality of the teaching, and to not having been taught in the first place how to set about history as a specialized subject. Hiscocks was like a refiner’s fire. (One or two people actually dropped out.) He lived for the History Sixth. There was no subject in the world so rewarding and noble as history. But its proper study - and entrance to Oxford or Cambridge - required a whole, all-round man, and to this many-faceted matter Hiscocks addressed himself with no less ardour.

When it came to English literature, our travels in the realms of gold were so unforeseeable as to blow your mind. We read Edward II, Tamburlaine the Great, The Winter’s Tale, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, Shakespeare’s sonnets, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Philaster, Samson Agonistes and - yes, we did - The Ascent of F6. (I read the part of Ransome’s mother.) In this sphere Hiscocks was less dogmatic than in teaching history. You were expected to have ideas and to voice them. He himself was very receptive of ideas from the form, and would often admit that he hadn’t thought of that, and allow it to be pursued for a while.

He was keen on lecturettes. Members of the History Sixth would be allotted subjects to which to devote special study and on which to give short addresses to the class. I remember speaking - or doing my best to speak - on ‘James I and the Spanish rapprochement’, ‘Shaftesbury and the Oxford Parliament’, and ‘Aspects of eighteenth-century music’.

For it must not be supposed that Hiscocks, in his sense of responsibility to his pupils, stopped short at history and English literature. That wouldn’t provide fodder enough for university scholarship general papers. He had a gramophone with an enormous horn (the latest thing in those days) and on Sunday evenings anyone in the Sixth was invited to go to his rooms, listen and talk. From the National Gallery he ordered hundreds of postcard reproductions on a sale-or-return basis, and these were passed round and discussed in class. You were free to order those you liked, and encouraged to build up a collection. (This was how I first became acquainted with Gauguin, with Kandinsky and with Matisse.) I still have some of them. ‘A painter’s - um - true job,’ said Hiscocks, ‘is to make people see ordinary things in their true reality and as they have never seen them before. Now take the - er - seventeenth-century Dutch painters: Pieter de Hooch and - er - bricks, for instance …’ Many years later, I was to travel in the Tahitian islands and find out that Hiscocks had spoken even more sooth than he knew. Gauguin painted exactly what is there to be seen.

Architecture we studied, and Hiscocks organized expeditions to Winchester and Oxford. I volunteered for a lecturette on Norman, and in the course of preparation found myself standing in a kind of daze in the north transept of Winchester Cathedral, and later actually moved to tears in the tiny, forlorn church of Avington beside the Kennet near Hungerford. As no book could, the austerity of Norman architecture told of a bleak, bare, northern world where the wind was cold, stones weighed heavy and vaults were round-arched and square in plan, because there was no other way in which vaults could be constructed.

It was at about this time that a series of articles by J.M. Keynes appeared in The Times, embodying his innovatory ideas on national economics and a policy for avoiding booms and slumps. Hiscocks cut these out and made me read and digest them thoroughly. ‘It always makes a favourable impression, Adams, if you can answer a question on — er — economics.’

Every week Hiscocks had a period devoted to current affairs. Each member of the class was allotted a subject - the Far East, Germany, Domestic Affairs and so on - and was required to comb the respectable daily newspapers for items and make his week’s report to the class. I wasn’t very good at this (my subject was the Near East) and tended to be slangy and facetious in my reports. Hiscocks corrected this tendency, and I learned the value of speaking precisely, with dignity and an air of authority, when addressing an audience (or a panel of examiners).

You’d wonder how on earth we got through all this, but we did; to be continually stimulated and excited, and to feel your capacity and abilities growing in directions you had never imagined - such experiences are commonly agreed to confer pleasure. Hiscocks may sometimes have been a little pedantic and humourless (another of his pet phrases, which everyone could imitate, was, ‘What’s the - er — significance of that, Smith?’ — or whoever you were). But as in the case of General Montgomery, like Hiscocks or not (and I did, very much), he was the right man for the job. I was naïf in those days and had no ideas whatever about my own future. I was entirely content to work for Hunt and Hiscocks, to swim and play fives for the school, to write poetry and to find myself at last out of the house-room and sharing a study with two boys I liked. It was as demanding and vivid a present as ever I have known.

I must now digress a little, in order to fulfil my earlier commitment to say more about the Greek theatre and its effect upon Bradfieldians.

Practically all British schoolchildren today have some acquaintance with Shakespeare. They read and act him at school. They study one or more of his plays for examinations. In recent years the admirable practice has grown up of producing the set play for the year in London and elsewhere, and the students are taken to see it. If you were to go enquiring among adults in a public bar on a Saturday night you’d probably have quite a job to find anyone who didn’t know something about Shakespeare. (Who Shylock was, for instance.) Shakespeare is part of the general scene as he is not in America.

This means that everyone, as a matter of course, thinks of drama in terms either of the proscenium arch or the Elizabethan open stage, or both: and drama itself they think of as something essentially secular, intended to move swiftly, to exploit suspense and to be as realistic as the confines of the stage and theatre will allow. (Shakespeare spends a lot of Henry V in lamenting that he can’t be more realistic, and the same point comes up a good deal in The Knight of the Burning Pestle.)

Ancient Greek drama springs from entirely different sources, is based on entirely different concepts of drama, moves slowly, excludes action on stage, is religious and not secular, verges on the ritualistic and is deliberately subject to various strict conventions. The audience all know the story, or it is assumed that they do. The topography of the stage is different from that of modern theatre, the relationship of protagonists, chorus and audience is a formal desideratum and the playwright’s objects are different. I won’t enlarge on this any more - it would take pages, anyway - but an excellent novel to which I recommend the reader is Mary Renault’s The Mask of Apollo. This will give anyone a reasonably firm grip on the social background, the conventions and the nature of ancient Greek drama in its day.

Quasi-ritualistic in form, controlled by accepted conventions and essentially conceived and written as a series of episodes divided by choruses: these characteristics are integral with and follow from the ground plan of the Greek amphitheatre itself - and surrounding The whole set-up constitutes a different dramatic world, the product of a different society and having a different purpose from that of Elizabethan, Jacobean or later European theatre. Most people in this country go through life without realizing this at all, or having any notion that ancient Greek drama is a vital part of the European cultural heritage. But Bradfieldians take this in through the pores - they can’t help it. In the summer term when a Greek play is on, it dominates and takes priority over everything else. Most people, including those not connected with the play at all, become familiar with it. A lot of people watch it in rehearsal and go to see it twice or even three times.

Yet how authentic is it? The answer must be, only to a limited extent. For a start, we are not ancient Greeks and theirs is neither our society, our religion nor our language. Again, we don’t know how spoken ancient Greek sounded, or what their music or choral dancing was like. How much sense of involvement had the audience? I’d say a lot. They clearly had the sense of being reft out of themselves (catharsis), for we are told that the audience were terrified by the Eumenides, that pregnant women miscarried and heaven knows what besides. I have always admired Kenneth Tynan’s proposition that drama consists in showing what people do when they become desperate. This certainly applies to ancient Greek drama, but whatever transporting feelings the ancient Greeks had, we can’t really share them today. The Bradfield Greek play, however beautifully and sensitively directed and performed, can only take place, as it were, in a glass case. We are not worshipping Dionysos.

And yet, to feel oneself part of this singular tradition of Bradfield; to know the great plays themselves - Agamemnon, Antigone (as Hiscocks would say, one of the most - er - significant works in western literature), Philoctetes (another such), Alcestis, Oedipus Coloneus, the Bacchae, Hippolytus - to have seen and heard these performed in what must be - the theatre itself included - at least a respectable approximation to the original performances - this can only be counted a tremendous benediction, something always to feel grateful for. A true sense of the form and nature of ancient Greek drama - a visual knowledge - this is the privilege and heritage of Bradfieldians. And it’s just about unique to them, too, apart from a few classical masters, dons et hoc genus.

I was lucky: there were two Greek plays during my time at Bradfield; the Agamemnon of 1934 and the Oedipus Tyrannus of 1937. Since then I have seen about thirteen Greek play productions -probably in total as many as any Englishman alive. They have had a lot of effect on my own work and on my way of thought as well.

In the bye years there was Shakespeare. Oh, wasn’t there just! The Greek theatre, with its fine acoustics and enormous acting area, including the orchestra, the audience and even sometimes behind the audience, is ideal for this sort of drama. I’m sure Shakespeare would have loved it. As I have told, in 1936 Twelfth Night was produced, and in 1938 A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This was my introduction to the latter play, and since then I have never seen a production informed by more sheer magic. The Oberon (Michael Halstead) was splendidly regal and sinister. The Puck (John Hopewell) seemed not human, a half-malicious gnome-creature of mischief and witchcraft. Peter Quince (Alan Helm) and Bottom (Tony Dallas) were side-splittingly funny. The whole story seemed to unfold under a kind of green, arboreal spell, and to this the music, specially composed by Cecil Woodham, contributed a great deal.

In 1939 the production was Romeo and Juliet (there were no girls in those days: all parts were played by boys), and although I had left by this time, I came to see it. I can only say I’m glad I did. My friend Euan Straghan was an outstanding Mercutio. Since then I’ve seen a lot of Shakespeare at Bradfield. Two particularly memorable productions were Charles Lepper’s Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew.

Without the Greek theatre I could not possibly have received anything like such an education in drama. I can only repeat, I have been more consistently happy in Greeker than anywhere else at all.

Now we have come to the Michaelmas term of 1937. By this time no thinking person over fifteen could fail to be conscious of Hitler. The country was split in two. There were people, even as late as now (and they included the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and quite a lot of his Government and back-benchers) who believed that Hitler could be bought off and war averted. They thought that the major threat was Russia, both on account of its great power and because twenty years before it had had a left-wing, Communist revolution and was committed, by Marxist and Leninist doctrine, to the destruction of capitalism. At all costs, thought the British right-wingers - the appeasers, as they became known - we must avoid a repetition of the horror of 1914—18. Even Hitler couldn’t be so crazy as to want that. If we can do a deal with Hitler, there could be a strong Anglo-German alliance (plus France) and Germany will be our bulwark against the ‘Bolshies’.

Up until the Munich crisis of September 1938, this was, as a matter of fact, a tenable view. But the whole argument rested on a false premise - namely, that Hitler could be trusted to keep a promise, that he too didn’t want war and knew when to stop.

The left wing were diametrically opposed to all this. They consisted of the thinking working-class and the intellectual left - which of course included Hunt and Hiscocks and all readers of The New Statesman and Nation and the News Chronicle. On the whole, this lot were in sympathy with the Russian regime of Stalin, upon the true cruelty and horror of which they were completely misinformed. They thought Russia really was a country where there was true class equality and where working-men, through nationalization, had freedom from capitalist exploitation. They wanted us to be allied to Russia and, while we were about it to take a reformist leaf or two (as they supposed) from Russia’s book. They saw Hitler, quite correctly, as a cruel tyrant and an untrustworthy international crook, with whom sooner or later accounts would have to be settled.

So both sides were partly right and partly wrong. Chamberlain was tragically wrong in thinking that we could do a deal with Hitler, but right in thinking that the one thing the people he represented wanted to avoid at almost all costs was war. (He also knew we weren’t armed and ready.) He was also right that Soviet Russia was a potential danger.

The Left were entirely wrong about Russia but entirely right about Hitler. They were also right in thinking that their own Tory Government was ready to give Hitler a great deal too much (such as Czechoslovakia) in the hope of avoiding war. They thought that if we’d stood up to Hitler and Mussolini earlier, over the Rhineland (1934) and Abyssinia (1935), we’d have stopped later trouble. They were right.

It’s no part of the purpose of this autobiography to chronicle the politics of the time: but the point I want to stress is that from now on (about mid-1937) my generation lived in the knowledge of Hitler and the apprehension of war. It was ‘business as usual’, but always with that grim thought at the back of everything. My sister, that hard-headed realist, was under no delusions and consequently neither was I.

By autumn of 1937 I had become one of Hiscocks’s star pupils. This had really happened because we suited each other. More mature boys, who had already formed ideas about what they intended to do, didn’t really care for Hiscocks, and even ridiculed him in a quiet way: though not to his face, of course. They thought he was too imperative and ardent, and expected too much. I was as putty in his hands, but this does not mean that I didn’t try to use my own mind. ‘I’m not - er - altogether convinced of that, Adams.’ (One of the rare smiles.) ‘Convince me.’ And I would proceed to try; sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Certainly Hiscocks could be a gauleiter, and one got to know where his sympathies (what Shakespeare would call his ‘affections’) lay. When he spoke of Stein, Hardenburg and Scharnhorst and of Turnvater Jahn, a kind of light would come into his eye and his discourse would wax extra warm, which was more than it did for Mazzini or even Garibaldi.

The information that I was lined up by Hiscocks to sit for the various Oxford and Cambridge scholarship examinations, with the first lot coming up early in December, had no particular effect on me; not of excitement or apprehension or anything else. I didn’t even start thinking ‘If I get an award - If I don’t get an award -’ I didn’t think ahead at all. If this was something that Hiscocks wanted done, then I’d better get on and do it. I ought, of course, to have been able to talk it all over with my housemaster, but as for all practical purposes I hadn’t got a housemaster, I simply left everything to Hunt and Hiscocks.

As the time drew on, Hiscocks’s preparations were meticulous. We did bona fide three-hour papers for real. Since available time for these was a bit limited, we also did ‘mock-ups’, in which we were given a sample exam. paper, required to choose four questions and to precis verbally what we would say and how. We did viva voce interviews, with Hiscocks pretending to be three dons. In all this my housemaster played no part whatever, except to be awkward and disobliging about the leave I had to get from him in order to fulfil Hiscocks’s programmes.

Meanwhile, my dear father had become very ill. I have never known exactly what his illness was, but it must have been some kind of breakdown consequent upon his drinking. The opinion of my sister and brother, who took over the administration of the family’s affairs, was that as I was safely away at Bradfield and in view of the impending exams, and also of my deep attachment to my father, the more ignorance I was left in, the better. I was not told either that he was delirious or that his life was in danger. However, Mr Arnold - though inadvertently — soon dispelled most of this happy ignorance. It so happened that I now had a minor responsibility in the house - that of reporting to him nightly the names of those who had been absent from any meal that day. (They always had leave and good reason: no one would want to cut a meal. But this was the system.) Every evening at this time, when I went into his study to report, he would immediately ask ‘How’s your father?’ This at first surprised, then disconcerted and finally alarmed and upset me. Well meant, I’m sure. I used to reply ‘All right as far as I know, sir.’

That early December I set out for Oxford in fairly thick snow. The journey involved a ‘bus from Bradfield to Reading, and thence a train. As I came under Tom Tower, clutching my suitcase, and got my first sign of Tom quad., it naturally startled and excited me greatly. Oddly enough, it didn’t daunt me. Rather, it had the opposite effect. I thought, I had no idea that Oxford was like this. I know what I want now, all right: I want to come here — not necessarily to Christ Church, but somewhere. (My sister had already warned me ‘Whatever you get, I don’t think you’ll be able to go up to Christ Church; too expensive.’)

Dining that night in Christ Church hall — reached by way of the glorious staircase - reinforced my feelings. If this was what Oxford was like, then I was going to get to it. The sight of so many strangers - the other candidates - didn’t unnerve me. I don’t know why: it wasn’t in character. (Mr Punch.) Apart from natural courtesy, I maintained a certain reserve. One little incident I recall. A fellow opposite me leaned across the table and said ‘Would you moind passing the moist sugar?’ Golly, I thought, a rustic! Competition from a rustic! I’ll show him! This unworthy thought at least served to raise my morale. (I had never heard the term ‘moist sugar’ before: later I told my mother, and after that we always used to talk about ‘the moist’ in inverted commas.)

I wasn’t offered anything as a result of those exams., although I learned afterwards that I had been considered for an exhibition at Merton. (The group of colleges involved was, I think, Christ Church, Oriel, Merton and Corpus Christi.) But I enjoyed doing the papers. This was for real, and it was encouraging to find that I could do them; and if I was any judge, do them reasonably well. Some of the results were posted up before we left Oxford. I remember hearing this while I was chatting among a little group of other candidates, and was unwise enough to enquire where the list might be seen. ‘Oi wouldn’t wurry!’ said the moist sugar chap banteringly. Well, he must at any rate have had some money, that moist sugar chap, for next year he was up at Christ Church as a commoner.

I didn’t feel particularly dashed by not getting anything, and Hiscocks had nothing but praise when we went over the paper together and I told him what I’d tried to say. The next scholarship exam. was for Worcester College, on its own. The college was lucky enough to be second in line that year - to have second pick of the candidates. Hiscocks was calm and assured. ‘The - er - field will be much clearer now, Adams.’

It so happened that at this time I stumbled into another of my periodic and virtually unavoidable rows with Mr Arnold about some slip-up over leave to go to a school society meeting, or something like that. It was his way not to impose a penalty or punishment at the time of the offence and be done with it, but to go on remembering it against you and accordingly to withhold the next two or three requests you might have to make. ‘Well, in view of what you’ve done recently, I don’t see why I should give you leave to go out on Sunday, do you?’

A little before I was due to go up again for the Worcester scholarship exam., I was suddenly summoned by the housemaster. ‘Mr Hiscocks wants you to go and see him this evening. I said I had no alternative but to refuse permission.’ Here he became a little incoherent. ‘Your recent conduct - you people - But you’ve got to go, it seems,’ he spat out, like a man thwarted beyond endurance. ‘Somebody from Worcester College, or something.’ I waited. ‘You’ll be back by quarter to eight and if you’re not back by quarter to eight you’ll be beaten. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I got down to Hiscocks, who was openly frustrated and annoyed that I couldn’t stay as long as he wanted. I was apprehensive of the housemaster’s anger and threat, and made it ‘twenty to eight’, to be quite sure. ‘The person from Worcester’ turned out to be an old boy named Jimmy Gilman, a friend and fellow-historian who had gone up to Worcester the year before. (Did Mr Arnold know this? If not, why not? If so, why didn’t he tell me?) Hiscocks had actually got Jimmy to come and give me the low-down on the dons of Worcester, their predilections, fads and foibles. He did so, most penetratingly and helpfully, for half an hour or more, until I felt I had cut it as fine as I could and must race back to the house. Mr Arnold did not, of course, bother to enquire whether all had gone well.

I had one final briefing from Hiscocks a day or two later. He had nice rooms, down at Lord’s Farm, some way from College, but muddy of access in winter. Just as I was leaving to go out into the snow, he turned his head and looked at me over the back of the sofa. ‘Do well at Worcester, Adams. It’s a nice place: you’d like it.’

From the very start there was something propitious about the Worcester enterprise. The College, the beautiful quad., Dr George Clarke’s library building, the gardens approached down a tunnel (like Alice), the lake, the playing fields - everything delighted me. As luck would have it, they lodged me in the De Quincey rooms - the finest undergraduate rooms in College. It was still bitterly cold, but when we got into hall the next morning, to start on the first paper, I found my place was near the fire, the only source of heat in the big room.

The papers might have been made for me. It was almost uncanny. ‘Examine the Spanish connection as a factor in the reign of James I.’ ‘What restraints were placed upon the power of the monarchy at the Restoration, and how effective were they?’ ‘Estimate the contribution of Prussia to the defeat of Napoleon.’ ‘Compare and contrast Mazzini and Cavour as leaders of the Risorgimento.’ Time was the only problem, and the invigilator had to stand over me and begin ‘I’m afraid -’ before I reluctantly parted with my European history answers.

The English essay was a brute. There was only one subject and no more. ‘Character and intellect’. It wasn’t my sort of thing at all, but I had an honest stab at it. (‘Never start writing for at least an hour, Adams: longer, preferably.’)

The general paper came last, on a dark, freezing afternoon. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I read through the questions. ‘Write a short appreciation of one of the following styles of English architecture: Norman; Early English; Decorated; Perpendicular.’ ‘Must epic deteriorate as civilization advances?’ ‘Of what use are museums?’ ‘Compare any two of the following:- Bach and Handel; Reynolds and Gainsborough; Keats and Shelley; Trollope and Dickens.’ And there, at the foot of the page, ‘What measures would you take to avoid a slump?’

As it fell out, this exam. spanned the end of term at Bradfield, so I was returning home direct from Worcester. My mother, who loved to go out in the car whenever she could (she didn’t drive), had been driven to Oxford by Thorn to take a look round, have tea and return home with me. She was early - the exam. hadn’t finished - but in spite of the cold she set out to have a walk round the College. As she was thus engaged, in some way or other she ran into and became acquainted with the medieval history tutor, Vere Somerset. Vere Somerset was a bachelor, at this time in his mid-forties, I suppose: something of an aristocrat (a connection of the family of Beaufort) and passionately fond of music. As I was to learn, he enjoyed arranging social occasions for his students and getting to know them. My mother, who had been a pretty girl, was always up for a little light flirtation, and what with my father’s illness and our financial decline, must during the last year or two have come to feel rather deprived socially. Anyway, she and Vere Somerset took a shine to each other, and it was he with whom she had tea. A little later, in the early evening, I underwent a fascinating viva voce. All I can remember of it is that they were plainly well-disposed towards me, and that I had a friendly altercation with Mr Pickard-Cambridge, the distinguished philosopher, about the merits of Tchaikovsky as a composer. (I was pro-Tchaikovsky: Mr P.-C. courteously suggested that in time I would get tired of him. I can’t say that I ever have.)

We were home in time for dinner, and I found my father coherent and convalescent. I knew intuitively that he had stopped drinking whisky (I expect he had been badly frightened), but he was ready enough to go two hundred yards up the road with me to the village pub. and have a beer or two. We didn’t talk about his illness, but I could tell he was as glad to see me again as I was to see him. He had retired from work, and I had the feeling that now that he would soon be recovered, he was likely to find time hanging on his hands. My brother was at home, but my sister - now teaching at the Frances Holland in London - hadn’t yet arrived for Christmas.

I didn’t have to wait long for news from Worcester. A day or two later my mother received a short letter from Mr Somerset in his own hand. It said how much he had enjoyed their meeting at the College, and then went on to tell her that it was intended to elect her son to an open scholarship the following day. In a P.S., he added ‘I enjoyed your son’s remarks on Keats and Shelley.’ (I can’t remember saying anything very original.)

Here was a go! My kind, serious-minded, responsible brother at once began worrying his head about ways and means. The scholarship (Worcester awarded two history and two classical scholarships annually) was worth £100 a year. At that time, it was generally reckoned that a student could manage in a modest way on about £240 a year. Where was the other £140 to come from? My brother set about the business of applying to the County Council for an auxiliary (county) scholarship.

A day or two later came the official invitation from the College, offering me the scholarship. It was necessary for me to accept formally in writing. At the same time arrived my sister - the arrival of whom I had been awaiting eagerly.

I had always respected and admired my sister. Her own fine university achievement had made me dare to hope that one day I might be able to manage something of the sort. During my time at Bradfield, although I had achieved certain academic successes, she had never spoken a word of praise or congratulation. At last, I thought, I knew why. It was because, as I now perceived, these had been relatively trifling, parochial matters, not really worth remark by a scholar of her standing. She had been waiting to see whether I was capable of doing something worthwhile in the real world. Now I had. Now, at last, she - the only knowledgeable, discriminating person, apart from Hiscocks and Hunt, whose praise was worth having - would say what she had been keeping back for something that really deserved it.

She showed up in her usual door-slamming, kick-off-your-shoes style. I waited happily while she had a drink and a meal. Afterwards, while she was reading the paper, my mother said something about the scholarship.

‘Well,’ said my sister, ‘I do think someone might have taken the trouble to ring me up and tell me.’ A little later she went out somewhere. She didn’t allude to the matter again.

It still hurts, after all these years. But little by little I came to realize that her saying nothing was due not to deliberate unkindness, but to a sort of emotional inhibition which made it impossible for her to find or to come out with words of warmth or compliment. There are people - they are usually clever people - who have this limitation. Years later, I was to work for a brilliant civil servant, David Nenk, in the Ministry of Education, who had the same impediment. Anyway, my mortification was eased by a telegram which arrived that evening. ‘Congratulations and best wishes Hiscocks.’ (Nothing from Mr Arnold, of course.)

My brother’s representations to the Berkshire County Council were successful. They awarded me a grant of £90 a year. The other £50 would be found somehow. I rather think Aunt Lilian came down with the ready. Good for her! The more immediate question was whether I should now leave Bradfield or remain there until the end of the summer term. Once again, I had no views of my own and was quite content to wait until others had decided for me. My sister and Hiscocks met and talked it over: their decision was that on balance I would gain more by staying at Bradfield. Hiscocks remained of the view which he had put into writing for the authorities at Worcester. ‘As a historian he is immature but capable of good work.’ (‘It’s always better, Adams, not to - er - lay it on too thick.’) I could do with two more terms of Hiscocks.

I had no objections. As the winner of an open scholarship, I now rated the privileges of a full blood; that is to say, in all respects those of a house - though not a College - prefect. This was certainly one step towards putting down the housemaster. I began to meditate on other possibilities. Two were open to me during the coming Lent term. I could try to get my fives colours and I could try to win the Denning, as it was called - the College prize for English literature.

Both were distinctly chancy. The fives team consisted of only two pairs, which meant that, logically, only four people stood to win their colours. Michael Paine, the head prefect of the Close, was an outstanding athlete and easily the best fives player in the school. He had taught me virtually all the skill I had — really because he wanted a decent partner for the house to win the fives doubles cup. (He himself would win the singles.) In another house there was a boy called Henry Joy whom I knew I couldn’t beat. That left two places, and the aspirants were myself and two other boys called John Hoare and David Martin. What actually happened in the event was that I began that term in the College second pair with John Hoare; then David displaced me; but towards the end of the term, David went sick and I played the last two or three matches in his stead. Exceptionally, the term ended with five colours, Paine, Joy, Hoare, Martin and myself.

The Denning was recognized as an arduous business, on account of the work involved and the hot competition. No one had to enter for the Denning prize: you chose to do so only if you coveted glory. There were several set books - novels and poetry — on which to be examined, and there was also a paper on general knowledge of English literature. This was unusual inasmuch as it was held in the College library and you could go to the shelves and look up anything you wanted. It was a matter not of memory but of what you knew.

My principal competitors were a boy called Francis - no mean poet - and an even better poet named Michael Rivière, who had a really keen mind. After all this time I remember only two things about the syllabus. The first is that one of the set books was Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici. This happened to be one of my father’s favourites. He bought me a beautiful annotated copy and himself ‘talked through’ the book with me. That was one paper on which I surely knew what song the sirens sang. The second is that the general paper included a question something like ‘Write an appreciation of any distinguished Victorian poet.’ I waded in with Tennyson, on whom at the time I had a great crush. I remember quoting ‘Lady Clara Vere de Vere’ as evidence that he possessed a social conscience! Heaven knows how I won the Denning, but I did.

The pleasant thing about these last two terms at Bradfield was that no one - not even Hiscocks - was particularly demanding about work. Nothing more could really be required of me, and by this time I had absorbed enough proficiency to satisfy without taking too much trouble. This was largely, of course - as it is with any job - a business of knowing what to concentrate on and what didn’t matter. (No wasted energy.) In leisure time there were plenty of exciting discoveries to be made, such as Gerard Manley Hopkins and - a novelist who was currently hitting the high spots - Ernest Hemingway. Mr Hunt was engaged to be married to a charming girl called Catharine Cohen, who sometimes took me out in her car on wild-flower expeditions. I was always hoping that we might find a rare orchis, such as the Bee orchis or the Military orchis, but we never did: and indeed I never have. The twayblade is the best I have ever done from that day to this.

One hot summer night in July, a few days before the end of term, I was lying in bed in my ‘single’ (senior boys had single rooms) when the door opened quietly and a low voice said ‘Adams, are you awake?’

It was Michael Paine. What on earth? I thought. It was out of the question that Paine, of all people, could come to another boy’s single for sexual reasons.

‘Yes,’ I replied in some apprehension.

‘Then let me congratulate you,’ said Paine, ‘on being awarded your house tie. Good night.’ And with this he shut the door and departed.

The award of a house tie at Bradfield was nothing to do with seniority or with being a prefect. A prefect did not automatically merit it. In fact, only a minority of boys who became prefects were awarded their house ties. Conversely, it was possible, though rare, for someone not a prefect to be awarded it. Prefect or not, you had to have distinguished yourself outstandingly at work or games or both. I seem to recall that Martin Ryle, later Sir Martin Ryle, the great astronomer, had the award before he was a prefect. The tie was in no sense a consolation prize for not being a prefect. In fact, as I have explained, in a certain sense it was more illustrious than being a prefect. I rather think that at this time there were only about four in the Close (including Paine, of course).

I wonder who exactly was behind this? I have never known. Did Paine persuade the housemaster, or did the housemaster himself undergo some change of heart? Subjective reactions are strange. Little in my life has given me more pleasure and satisfaction. I still have the tie and sometimes wear it when I go to Bradfield.

I must be fair to Mr Arnold. Before I left he spoke warmly and kindly to me, and he wrote nice things on my final school report. Poor chap, he was trying to do his best, I expect, and conscious that he’d got the job only because of his wife’s pull with the Headmaster. Well, he was lucky in one respect: he got what Pallas Athene promised Odysseus. ‘From the sea shall thy death come, the gentlest death that may be.’ He was fond of sailing, and often went to the Channel Islands. One day his boat - ship - whatever it was — was anchored a little way out, and he was rowing ashore in the dinghy. As the dinghy glided up to the quay it could be seen that all was not well. The housemaster sat dead at the oars.