Oxbridge Fashions, Complacent Parents and Imperialism

Until the Second World War public school masters, it appears, were recruited almost exclusively from Oxford and Cambridge. ¹ For most of the preceding hundred years, these universities had been, in the words of Noel Annan, ‘little more than finishing schools for public schoolboys’. ² Firmly implanted habits and the security of personal wealth ³ meant that the enthusiasms and practices of schooldays were extended into student days, with the result that during this period games were uppermost in the minds of many.