Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for National Heritage
One of the acts of Mrs Thatcher’s first government was to raise the fees of overseas students to a level which made Oxford more expensive than any Ivy League college in the USA. At Balliol, we were afraid this might destroy the international character on which we had long prided ourselves. I was instructed by the college to write to all its alumni in Parliament to protest against the policy. I received many letters of sympathy, but the longest and most helpful came from Peter Brooke, who was then MP for the cities of London and Westminster.
There was no hope, he told me, of persuading ministers to change their policy, but he agreed that Balliol’s cosmopolitan membership was part of its essence. He suggested we should launch an appeal to alumni, and volunteered his services as a fundraiser. It was this that led to the inauguration of the Dervorguilla Appeal. In its early days Peter was a most helpful ally, until he became a minister of state in the Department of Education and Science and had to stand aside.
His appointment coincided in time with the successful run of the TV series, Yes Minster, starring Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, which featured the relationship between a minister and his permanent secretary. As it happened, the permanent secretary at the time was also a Balliol man, Sir David Hancock. Nancy and I organized a Yes Minister luncheon to which we decided to invite the two politicians and the two actors. (Sadly, Nigel Hawthorne was unable to attend.)
In 1984, Peter’s son Jonathan came up to read PPE, and Peter would take whatever opportunity offered to visit Oxford and join his son in a game of cricket on the sports field. Jonathan was a keen athlete. He came to a reading party in the Alps in August in 1985, arriving in the midst of an unseasonable snowstorm. Undeterred, he secured an athletic triumph. On special days during a reading party, one or other undergraduate used to run down the 4,000 feet to the village of Saint-Gervais to fetch up fresh croissants for breakfast in the chalet. Jonathan established a record of 45 minutes there and back, easily beating the previous record of 49 minutes.
At this period, Peter began a relationship with me that he had previously enjoyed with Russell Meiggs: each of us, should we find ourself in an out-of-the-way place, would send the other a postcard. As a result, there is now among my papers deposited in the British Library a fine collection of Peter Brooke autograph postcards in his exquisite handwriting.
From 1989 to 1992, Peter was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and was often a guest speaker at British-Irish Association conferences. He gave up that office as a consequence of some minor gaffe during a television interview. He was succeeded by Sir Patrick Mayhew, who was kind enough to invite Nancy and me to stay with him in Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast. I took the opportunity to leave a copy of The Road to Hillsborough in the castle library.
In 1992, Peter moved to the Department of National Heritage. It was there that he made the greatest impact on my life. A year earlier, I had joined the board of the British Library under the chairmanship of Michael Saunders Watson, a landowner with a naval background. Peter now appointed me to replace him as chair. Michael regarded this as a shocking operation of the old-boy network, but he remained my good friend. Peter’s real reason for appointing me, he told me, was that he wanted to show that the new library, now nearing completion, was not just a building site but an intellectual institution.
Friends who congratulated me on my appointment to the chair divided into two groups: some told me the job was a bed of nails, others that it was a can of worms. The construction of the new library at St Pancras had dragged on for many years, underfunded and way behind schedule. Supervision of the construction by the board of the library was a nightmare, since it was the Department of National Heritage, not the library board, that was the official client. If, when inspecting the site, we library people saw something going wrong – insulation, it might be, being put up upside down – we had no power to stop it. We could only send a message up through the echelons of the ministry, to come back down to the site long after the harm had been done. During my time as chair, though, we had one decisive piece of luck. John Major, then at the Treasury, for the first time set out a realistic budget and a realistic timescale. The new library building was completed only after I had ceased to be chair, but I was present when, in 1998, the Queen opened the new British Library. She commenced her speech with the words: ‘This is an engagement that has been in my diary for a very long time.’ For many years now I have visited St Pancras only as a reader, but I find the new library a delightful place to work, and am grateful to Peter for having allowed me a share in its creation.
Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary
The Balliol College Register for 1983 contains an entry which begins: ‘JOHNSON Alexander Boris de Pfeffel: JOHNSON, Boris – b. 19 June 1964. New York. American. Generally known while at Balliol as Boris Johnson. Eton; Balliol 1983–7.’ Boris came up to Balliol to read for the four-year course in classical literature, history and philosophy known as Literae Humaniores. Had he come up a few years earlier it would have been my job to teach him Plato and Aristotle. But by 1983 I was no longer a classics tutor, but Master of the college, and Boris’ tutor in ancient philosophy was Jonathan Barnes, who went on record, in the first published biography of Boris, as regarding him as ‘definitely a good egg’.
The head of a college supervises the education of undergraduates only at one remove. At Balliol at the end of each term the tutors assembled in the Master’s dining room and the students were called in one after the other to listen to a report on their work. This ceremony was called ‘handshaking’, though no hands were shaken. On the basis of the tutors’ reports, I formed the judgement that while Boris had the necessary intelligence, he lacked the appropriate diligence to achieve the first-class degree that he clearly felt was his due.
Though he sat lightly to formal academic obligations, Boris did acquire a genuine love of the classics during his undergraduate years, and he was far from idle in social and political pursuits. In Balliol there was a debating club, the Arnold and Brackenbury Society. It was a light-hearted affair, resembling Matthew Arnold the frivolous undergraduate rather than Matthew Arnold the sage of sweetness and light. It was presided over by a stuffed owl named Mr Gladstone, and it had an absurdly complicated set of voting rules allowing, among other options, negative non-abstentions. Boris became president of this society, and on one occasion he and I spoke on the same side in favour of the motion, ‘This house would prefer a double Napoleon to a pair of Wellingtons.’ Our motion was carried overwhelmingly.
The Balliol JCR of those days was dominated by groups to the Left of the Communist Party, and Boris did not find it congenial. He spent more time with other clubs, such as the Bullingdon, and the Oxford Union. In 1986, he ran for the presidency of the Union. Though nothing like as rabid as the Balliol JCR, the Union was sufficiently left wing for it to be inconceivable for a Tory to be elected as president. Boris concealed his Conservative affiliation and let it be widely understood that he was a Social Democrat. So far as I know, he told no actual lies, but his strategy recalled Macaulay’s words about the difference between lying and deceiving: ‘Metternich told lies all the time, and never deceived any one; Talleyrand never told a lie and deceived the whole world.’ With Talleyrand-like skill, Boris got himself elected as President of the Oxford Union in Trinity Term.
Shortly after this I was telephoned by an SDP MP, Dick Taverne, who told me that he was looking for an intern to work for him during the vacation. He inquired whether I could suggest any candidates. ‘I’ve just the man for you’, I said, ‘bright and witty and with suitable political views. He’s just finished being president of the Union, and his name is Boris Johnson.’ When I summoned Boris to ask whether he was interested in the job, he burst out laughing: ‘Master, don’t you know I am a died-in-the-wool Tory?’
In 1987, Boris sat the final examinations. He was determined to get a first, and seemed confident that he could do so on the basis of six weeks of really hard work. Perhaps he might have been able to do so had he taken eight weeks: quite a few firsts have been gained on the basis of a last-minute spurt. But some weeks after the end of the examinations, Boris was summoned from France, told that his work was on the borderline between the first and second class, and instructed to appear for a viva, or oral examination.
A day or two later Boris knocked on my door, and presented a very humble appearance – the only time I have ever seen him do so. ‘I am to be viva’d on Aristotle’, he said. ‘My tutor is in France – but I hear you know something about Aristotle. Would you be kind enough to give me a tutorial in preparation?’ So we sat together for the best part of a day and went over a number of likely questions. In spite of this expert assistance, however, Boris achieved only an upper second. That is something that he has never forgotten. Nor has David Cameron, who got a first – not, in Lit. Hum. however, but in PPE, as Boris likes to remind people.
Boris has retained an affection for Balliol. He is married to Marina Wheeler, who was a college contemporary. He dedicated one of his books on the ancient world to his four classics tutors, and he has kept in touch with Jasper Griffin, who was his language tutor. While Boris was Mayor of London, Jasper assisted him from time to time with the classical passages with which he likes to decorate his speeches. At Boris’ fiftieth birthday party, Jasper read out a Greek ode that he had composed in his honour.
In 2015, on the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, I sent Boris a postcard reminding him that he had once eloquently expressed a preference for Napoleon over Wellington. ‘Come referendum day’, I said, ‘remember your Europhile youth.’ I received a witty, but non-committal reply. Later I wrote in serious terms:
Dear Boris
Last year I wrote you a frivolous letter on the subject of the referendum on Europe. I now write in all seriousness to ask you to throw your weight in favour of the UK remaining within the EU.
Having grown up during the years of the Second World War I have a sentimental attachment to the EU for having kept the peace between France and Germany for a longer period than any other since those two nations had an established identity. Intellectually I have no arguments in favour of the EU other than those that will be very familiar to you. But I am very impressed by the fact that the more intelligent and impartial portion of the press – the FT and The Economist for example – is strongly in favour of remaining, whereas the case for Brexit is pressed by the populist and xenophobe tabloids.
Among the Balliol friends and pupils with whom I am still in touch opinion is almost unanimous that leaving the EU would be a disaster not only for us but for other European nations. This has been expressed to me forcibly both by businessmen and diplomats. My Irish friends and students are particularly aghast at the prospect of Brexit.
I write to you now because at this moment you are in a remarkably influential position. Whatever happens at this week’s summit, the PM is bound to say that he has achieved a great deal, and the Eurosceptics will say that it is not enough. You are one of the very few people whose personal decision could affect the outcome. You are respected by both parties to the debate, and you have kept your stance impartial between them both. Please use your influence in favour of a vote to remain.
Sadly, that letter remained unanswered. The outcome of the referendum, after Boris threw his weight behind Brexit, bore out the assertions in my final paragraph. But it did not achieve Boris’ undisguised ambition to become prime minister: he was, as one newspaper put it, brought down by friendly fire. When I learned of his almost becoming prime minister I had vivid memories of the day when he almost got a first.
I last saw Boris in May 2017 at Jasper Griffin’s eightieth birthday party. It was sporting of him to attend, in the middle of an election campaign. He read a witty poem he had written in honour of Jasper. But he was not welcomed by many of the guests, and some seriously considered walking out when he entered. As he left the college he was hissed and booed by members of the current undergraduate generation.
As he departed, I reflected ruefully on the college’s part in his education. We had been privileged to be given the task of bringing up members of the nation’s political elite. But what had we done for Boris? Had we taught him truthfulness? No. Had we taught him wisdom? No. What had we taught? Was it only how to make witty and brilliant speeches? I comforted myself with the thought that even Socrates was very doubtful whether virtue could be taught.
Yvette Cooper, Privy Councillor
In an Oxford college it is always wise for the head of house and the president of the JCR to keep on good terms with each other. Even during the years of student revolution I was lucky to have a succession of presidents of personal charm. In the year 1969–70, the president was Martin Kettle, then a member of the Communist Party – that is to say, at the right-wing end of the JCR politics of those days. After a term in which the JCR had caused the dons a lot of trouble, Martin invited Nancy and me to let in the New Year of 1970, with him and other members of the JCR committee, in a cottage owned by his family in Great Langdale. It was a miniature replica of the Christmas truces in the 1914–18 trenches.
The last of my JCR presidents was Yvette Cooper, who came to the college in 1987. By this date, relations between senior and junior members were perfectly civil, but there remained points of conflict. During Yvette’s term of office, the point of contention – which I remember only faintly – was whether senior or junior members had control of the JCR bar. It was on such issues that Yvette cut her political teeth.
My most vivid memories of the young Yvette, however, are not political. When the time came for me to leave the college she organized a gigantic farewell party for all the junior members. Her JCR committee baked an enormous goodbye cake for us, modelled as a replica of the college buildings. It was too large to fit through any door, but quickly vanished into the mouths of the junior members assembled in the quad.
Among the parting gifts Yvette gave me was a set of T-shirts. One of them, designed by Liza Dimbleby, portrays on its chest an elegant star-spangled nude. On the beach, I find it evokes a startled response from fellow holidaymakers: ‘Wherever did you get that?’, they ask. ‘Oh’, I used to say, during Gordon Brown’s ministry, ‘it was given to me by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.’
Yvette and I see each other only rarely nowadays, at gaudies and the like. But when watching Parliament on television, I keep an eye open for her interventions from the back benches, which are always to the point. It is a sign of the current malaise of British politics that neither she nor her husband Ed Balls are able to contribute their talents to the highest levels of either government or opposition.