ABSTRACT
It is easy to assume that Oxbridge Blues – particularly double Blues – segued effortlessly from the world of academia to the world of work, from the sports field to posts in the law, the church, the army or the higher reaches of the British and Imperial civil service. Whether or not they excelled at sport, Oxford and Cambridge graduates dominated the upper echelons of both the ancient professions and the burgeoning government service. All senior judges, of course, were university graduates (usually from Oxford or Cambridge) – and more than three-quarters of them had been to a public or other private school (usually Eton or Harrow).1 It was much the same in all professions. The great majority of civil service heads of departments, confirms Harold Perkin, ‘had been to public or other private schools …, a large if declining proportion of these to Eton or Harrow … and the share of Oxbridge graduates was increasing’.2
