ABSTRACT
Having since had the great pleasure of meeting Cécile Morrisson, I must say that there can, in fact, have been very little resemblance between the erudite and chic Professor Morrisson and the extremely tatty and somewhat confused graduate student that I then was. One thing, however, led to another. My paper on the ‘Poor and the Powerful’ at the symposium was taken up for publication in Past and Present by the late, great Rodney Hilton (whom, I suspect, had been told by Bryer that I was a distinguished economic historian from Paris), and, in the summer of 1974, when faced by a table full of suits (no women, of course, on appointment committees in the University of Manchester then, and precious few since … but I digress), I was able to maintain – fingers firmly crossed behind my back – that I was ‘quite used’ to speaking to large audiences. The fact that the then Professor of Medieval History (a somewhat ‘unreconstructed’ individual) was able to report back, with some surprise, to his colleagues – and here you must imagine the rich tones of Accrington – ‘We have appointed a young woman; we have not had One of Them since the War, when the chaps went to the
Forces’, I attribute in great measure to the immense boost in my confidence provided by Bryer’s invitation.
