ABSTRACT
When I went to University College London in 1961 I was just turned 18 and cannot recall ever having met any real people who had been to university. Real people excluded teachers and the like. They had degrees, but their social distance only served to make me aware that a postman’s son from a graduate-free extended family in Berkshire would be well out of his depth among students. And so he was. The degree was psychology, chosen without advice or much thought. Other students seemed so mature and urbane. How could I survive the exams at the end of the f irst year against such competition? It felt possible only by working harder than others did. I thus spent the first year not speaking in seminars, reading everything that was recommended and much that was not, which I did in the law library so as to avoid social contact with other psychology students which would reveal me as the fool I felt. In retrospect, that was an important year.
