I went up to Pembroke College Cambridge at the start of the Michaelmas term in October 1949.\u00a0 Like almost all Freshmen I was allocated a room in College, Room T10, a comparatively modern if small, room on the top floor of one of the staircases in New Court.\u00a0 It had a good view looking over the court and beyond that to Hall.\u00a0 It had a gas fire and a bed and table but that is about all.\u00a0 In my first letter home I ask if Tom Gummer could bring some of my Peter Scott pictures to make it look less bare.\u00a0 Tom Gummer was a frequent visitor to Cambridge in his capacity as Managing Director of Dolamores, the Baker Street wine merchants, who had a store in Petty Cury.<\/p>\n
My companion on this floor was Bobby King.\u00a0 A large, jovial character from Merchant Taylors, a couple of months older than me.\u00a0 He got his rugger blue in 1950, and we read economics together.\u00a0 Great fun!<\/p>\n
When I first went up I did not know what I was going to read.\u00a0 Since taking an English scholarship I had always assumed I would read English.\u00a0 My father was dead against this and wanted me to read something more useful; like law.\u00a0 It was only during my preliminary discussions with the Senior Tutor, Tony Camps, that we decided I should read one year of economics, followed by two years of law.\u00a0 My letter home announcing this justifies the decision not to do three years of law by saying that \u2018the first year is all Roman Law and useless anyway.\u00a0 I hope you don\u2019t mind, but it suits me\u2019.\u00a0 (I ended up reading economics for all three years as I was finding it interesting and it fitted in with my rowing.)\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing to me, in what seems the modern obsession with what subject one should read, how casually this decision was made.<\/p>\n
I was totally at a loss what to do those first days, bored even.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think lectures began for about the first ten days.\u00a0 I was evidently not at a loss for friends as my letters say \u2018Ever since I arrived I have been meeting people I know, or have known either at school or in the army, I can hardly walk down the streets without seeing someone, so I am not exactly out in the cold or lonely\u2026I spend most of the time wandering about the town, trying not to spend too much money, learning my way about and visiting various people\u2019.<\/p>\n
It did not take me long to find my way down to the river and start rowing.\u00a0 Even before my trunk had arrived, with my rowing clothes, or my bicycle, I borrowed some clothes and went out sculling.\u00a0 A few days later I got into an VIII for the first time in two years and found I was very stiff after this outing.\u00a0 This was a University Trial VIII.\u00a0 I did not last long in that; I guess I was too overweight.\u00a0 However, I was soon in a college trial VIII.\u00a0 The President of the Pembroke College Boat Club (PCBC) was James Crowden, with whom I subsequently became firm friends.\u00a0 He had been in the Bedford School VIII which beat the Radley VIII with me in it in the Princess Cup at Henley in 1946.\u00a0 James knew all about my rowing career; I realised once I knew him better that he had a photographic memory when it came to people\u2019s rowing careers.\u00a0 He was a dynamic captain and was trying to recruit as many Freshmen into the PCBC as possible.\u00a0 In this he was very successful and the club embarked on a period of considerable success under his leadership.<\/p>\n
It took me a long time to adjust to the rhythm of reading economics.\u00a0 We only had six lectures a week and there was one essay to write for a tutorial given by my Supervisor, a very dull young man.\u00a0 I cannot remember his name.\u00a0 That did not fill up much of the week.\u00a0 Only one of the lecturers provided guidance on books to read in between lectures.\u00a0 He was the Reader in Economic History, Kenneth Berrill (later Lord Berrill), and economic history I found much more interesting than economic or monetary theory!\u00a0 Even so I doubt if I did much reading for him.\u00a0 We always went to Tutorials in pairs.\u00a0 My companion at these was Peter Mansfield.\u00a0 Strangely enough we remained doing Tutorials together for the full three years of the tripos, although we had absolutely nothing in common.\u00a0 He became President of the Union, joined the Foreign Office, resigned at the time of the Suez Crisis, and then became an expert on the Arabs, writing a number of books, yet we continued together in complete harmony all that while.<\/p>\n
The only university club I remember joining early on was the Mountaineering Club.\u00a0 During the term we did some practice rock climbing, learned to abseil and elementary rope work, but there was nothing worth climbing within reasonable distance of Cambridge.\u00a0 In the Christmas vacation I went on a week\u2019s trip with the Club to the Climber\u2019s Club hut at Tryfan in North Wales, where the Everest expedition of the following year did some of their training; one of the Everest team, George Band, was in our party.\u00a0 This was a serious introduction to serious rock climbing and by the end of the week I had decided that, much as I liked hill walking, I did not have the head for rock climbing proper.\u00a0 In addition, if I was to join in the club\u2019s expeditions, it would conflict with my rowing commitments, and rowing was my first priority.\u00a0 So I resigned.\u00a0 The other members of the group at Tryfan were fanatics; one of the evening\u2019s entertainments was to circumnavigate the main room without putting a foot on the floor, using skirting boards, window frames and anything else that provided a handhold!\u00a0 One enjoyable day I remember was doing the Snowdon Horseshoe in a blizzard.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t particularly well off at any time during my years at Cambridge.\u00a0 Having failed to win a scholarship I missed out on that source of income.\u00a0 What was maddening was that, if I had not tried to win the scholarship, nor stayed on at Radley for an extra term, and joined up when I was eighteen, I would have been eligible for a state scholarship (or whatever they were called then).\u00a0 But these scholarships were withdrawn from those starting National Service after the end of 1947, so I missed out on that source of income.\u00a0 On the other hand I was extremely fortunate.\u00a0 My grandmother used the money she would have left to my father to set up a Trust Fund for Dennis and myself; I\u2019m not exactly sure when this started, I think some time in1951; certainly it was not providing me with an income at the time I went up.\u00a0 I imagine my father, poor man, must have been giving me an allowance. \u00a0The Trust Fund was for \u00a310,000, which in today\u2019s money would have been worth \u00a3300,000 or so.\u00a0 It produced an annual income of around \u00a3300 a year; I guess this would equate to about \u00a39,000 in present day terms.\u00a0 I lived on this.\u00a0 As far as I remember my father did not have to pay for anything else; this was enough to provide for me in reasonable comfort.<\/p>\n
My letters for the 1950 Lent Term are mostly about rowing.\u00a0 I was in the Pembroke first VIII for the Lent Bumping Races.\u00a0 We were not a bad crew, but just not good enough to bump Clare, who were the boat in front, and so we ended up at the end of the four days exactly where we had started.\u00a0 Later in the term I joined with James Crowden to enter the University Junior Pair Oar races, the Forster Fairbairn Pairs. \u00a0This involved training every morning so that, in addition to training in the VIII in the afternoon, as well as coaching, I was pretty busy.\u00a0 James and I did surprisingly well, losing the final by only one second.\u00a0 This involved a lot of morning rowing.<\/p>\n
My parents were in the throes of moving from Little Mount to a smaller house, Highwood Corner[1]<\/a>, about half a mile away.\u00a0 In a letter home in late April I am congratulating them that they had bought the house.\u00a0 Then everything went wrong, since they could not sell Little Mount.\u00a0 The housing market was upset by the outbreak of the Korean War in June and I suppose big houses were not in demand.\u00a0 They eventually had to sell Highwood Corner, without ever having lived there, and stay on in Little Mount till the market was more favourable.<\/p>\n I went back early for the May term to row.\u00a0 My first letter home relates that \u2018I was back rowing on the river only about a couple of hours after I arrived here\u2026.and I have been out every day since then.\u00a0 The VIII is not going too well but I hope and think it will improve soon.\u00a0 There is quite a long time before the Mays anyhow.\u00a0 They are on the 7-10th of June.\u00a0 I am working fairly hard as well as rowing as my exams are not far away.\u2019\u00a0 In the next letter I write \u2018My exams start a month tomorrow so that I am really having to get a bit of work in between then and now.\u00a0 I am doing my best, although it is very hard with all the lovely weather outside.\u00a0 However, once they are over I can relax for a bit and there will only be my rowing to worry about then.\u2019\u00a0 The exams were from May 29-31st.\u00a0 I got a 2.1 and was pleased with myself.\u00a0 The May races were only a week later so my free time was very short.\u00a0 The races themselves were always a time of considerable stress.\u00a0 The first division races did not start till 7pm so there was a long day\u2019s wait every day, wondering what the day would produce.\u00a0 We did badly, being bumped three times.\u00a0 The May Ball was on June 13th and Joan Warren came as my partner.\u00a0 It was my first real ball as an adult.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say I remember much about it except that it was a wet night and not good for punting.<\/p>\n I went home for a few days at the end of term before going to Henley for the regatta.\u00a0 We all met up at the Five Horseshoes[2]<\/a> pub at the top of Remenham Hill on June 19th where we lived for almost three weeks until the end of the regatta on July 8th.\u00a0 We were all in strict training but this really meant little more than no alcohol and some strenuous walks.\u00a0 We considered the rowing itself enough exercise; a far cry from today\u2019s emphasis on weight training.\u00a0 Pembroke entered an VIII for the Ladies Plate another VIII for the Thames Cup and IVs for the Visitors and Wyfolds.\u00a0 I was in the VIII in the Ladies and the IV in the Wyfolds.\u00a0 We lost the semi-final of the Ladies to TrinityCollege, Dublin and the Wyfolds IV was knocked out in the first round.\u00a0 All good experience.\u00a0 I was asked to join a joint Pembroke-Clare VIII to go to Germany to race KielUniversity but the trip never came off because the Amateur Rowing Association decreed that no British crew could compete against a crew from an ex-enemy country.<\/p>\n After that I spent three weeks in August at the \u2018Coach and Horses\u2019 in Llangynidr.\u00a0 I kept a diary of that holiday and include it in full for interest, but as a separate appendix.\u00a0 I have no idea how I spent the rest of the vacation.<\/p>\n At the end of the summer term I had been elected President of the Pembroke College Boat Club.\u00a0 James Crowden stood down, partly because he had failed his exams (he subsequently passed when he retook them), and partly because he hoped to be in the Blue (university) Boat and thought he would no longer have the time to be able to do justice to the job.\u00a0 This post carried a certain amount of kudos in the college and I was very proud.\u00a0 It did require a considerable amount of time, however, and left even less time for economics than in my first year.\u00a0 To do the job justice I was allowed to stay in College.\u00a0 I was given an enormous room on the ground floor of M staircase.\u00a0 It is now I think the Junior Common Room.\u00a0 Then, it was all mine; a huge living room, with separate bedroom and separate washroom, and large windows looking out over the FellowsGarden.\u00a0 I changed Supervisor.\u00a0 I was taken in hand by J.W.F. (Wilkie) Rowe, the College Tutor in Economics.\u00a0 He had a poor reputation as a university lecturer and wasn\u2019t a very inspiring supervisor either.\u00a0 Before the war he had been one of a group of brilliant Cambridge economists, chief among them Maynard Keynes but also including my next year\u2019s supervisor, Professor Joan Robinson.\u00a0 Wilkie had dropped out of the group to care for a sick wife and had lost his inspiration.\u00a0 I got to know him very well later, when I was working in the School of Agriculture, and we became good friends.\u00a0 He had a lovely house on the Broads, his passion was sailing, and I stayed with him there once with Sarah.\u00a0 To my surprise and delight I got a 2.1, which was remarkably good considering that only 15 people got a 2.1. \u00a0And no one got a first.\u00a0 In my diary I comment that, though I had hoped for a 2.1, I was not confident since I did not see how I could have got such a mark on the amount of work I had done; \u2018I suppose I must have done more than I thought\u2019!\u00a0 Soon after the results came out I had a post card from Wilkie addressed to the Five Horseshoes giving me the detailed results; I had only got a b- in Principles of Economics and he commented \u2018I hate this Principles mark.\u00a0 Having got a First at Henley, please see to this other.\u00a0 It was very nice of you to time your bump last Saturday right in front of me!\u00a0 Quite thrilling.\u2019<\/p>\n Looking back on the terms when I was President of the PCBC, I seem to have done nothing but row, coach and organise others to row.\u00a0 There was very much a routine of rowing events through the year, the light IVs and the Fairbairns in the winter term, the Lent bumping races in the Lent term; the Head of the River Race, from Mortlake to Putney in March, a national event in which I think we were eighth out of about 200 crews; culminating in the May bumping races (in June of course, like the May Ball!), with one or two other University events thrown in for good measure, like the Forster Fairbairn pairs in early summer.\u00a0 I entered that with Marcus English[3]<\/a> but we lost the final by three seconds.\u00a0 I had to organise the crews and the coaches for all the events and decide who went in which crew.\u00a0 All very time-consuming but satisfying.\u00a0 I had a few days in the University Trial VIIIs but was soon rejected.\u00a0 I learnt years later, from James Crowden, that the coaches realised that I would never make the Blue boat so there was no point in wasting time with me in the Trial boats.\u00a0 My trouble was that I was too small, not tall enough even for those days and too light, when size counted for less than it does today.\u00a0 I could pull my weight but I was not heavy enough for a University crew.\u00a0 I might have made bow in the Blue Boat but I never performed well on bow side.\u00a0 I tried rowing bow side in the Pembroke Lent Boat but with little success.\u00a0 The PCBC had a pretty good year and the first VIII had a successful Mays, just missing four bumps as the crew ahead of us, on the first night, made a bump before we bumped them.<\/p>\n And so back to the Five Horseshoes at Henley for the regatta.\u00a0 I have kept a detailed diary of the regatta period which I have reproduced, even though it is full of rowing!\u00a0 The PCBC did very well.\u00a0 At Marlow regatta the VIII won the Marlow VIIIs.\u00a0 At Henley the VIII won the Ladies Plate; James Crowden (rowing with Brian Lloyd of Lady Margaret Boat Club) won the Silver Goblets.\u00a0 Tony Fox won the Diamond Sculls.\u00a0 As President I was the centre of all the congratulations, even though in my heart of hearts I knew the real credit went to James Crowden.<\/p>\n Most of the rest of the month of July I spent sculling. I joined Marlow Rowing Club.\u00a0\u00a0 I bought a sculling boat which I kept at the club and spent hours sculling up and down the river trying to improve.\u00a0 I entered sculling events at Kingston and Molesey regattas and lost them both.\u00a0 I just wasn\u2019t cut out to be a sculler, much as I enjoyed it.\u00a0 At the end of the month I flew to Ireland with my mother and father for a two week fishing holiday; at least it was a fishing holiday for my father.\u00a0 This is written up in a separate diary.\u00a0 It was a most enjoyable holiday and a relief to be away from the rationing of Britain and be able to eat what one wanted.\u00a0 Its surprising now to realise that food was still rationed in 1951.<\/p>\n I had about ten days at home before setting off on a hitch-hiking holiday to France and Switzerland with Patrick Creswell.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Our first objective was a Youth Hostel at Thonon, on the south side of Lake Geneva in France.\u00a0 We got to Geneva by boat and train via Paris and then hitch-hiked in the heat of the day along the lake.\u00a0 Nobody would stop; I can\u2019t say I blame them, two gangly youths with huge packs.\u00a0 We had a few days there and then walked from Thonon up into the mountains to Morzine where there was a delightful youth hostel and we were looked after by the concierge and his wife or whatever they were called, with great care and lots of good food.\u00a0 I had my first fondue there.\u00a0 We walked in the hills and experienced the joys of the Alps.\u00a0 From Morzine we went to Chamonix and tried to go up Mont Blanc as far as we could.\u00a0 I sprained my ankle half way up and had an agonising walk down and was unable to do much for several days.\u00a0 Somewhere about here we picked up two French girls who were also hitch-hiking; I guess it was Patrick who did the picking up!\u00a0 Michele and D\u00e9d\u00e9 were couturieres from Paris and a very jolly pair for two staid English!\u00a0 I guess their company did us a power of good, particularly as I could hardly walk.\u00a0 When I had recovered a bit we left the girls at Chamonix, having agreed to meet them somewhere next year, and went to Annecy and spent the rest of our holiday there.<\/p>\n I went back to Cambridge early, with the other members of the IV in order to get some intensive rowing practice before we were interrupted by the need to work. \u00a0I remember it as a period of calm autumnal weather and rowing on an uncrowded river was a sheer delight.\u00a0 The IV went very well but we still lost the final of the light IVs later that term.<\/p>\n I had handed over the presidency of PCBC to Toby Coghill as I wanted to do more work.\u00a0 He had come up the same term as me and been in all the same crews.\u00a0 He was later to row in the 1952 Blue Boat, having also got a half-blue for ice hockey.\u00a0 No longer having any excuse to live in College, I had been all prepared to share digs with James Crowden at 4 Pembroke Street until the Dean offered me a room in college.\u00a0 So I ended up on the top floor above the Senior Common Room in the middle court, a room once occupied by Thomas Grey, the poet, some 200 years earlier.\u00a0 It was a spacious room with separate bedroom and washroom, if rather cold in the winter.<\/p>\n Once again I changed Supervisors, but still with Peter Mansfield as my fellow student.\u00a0 My new Supervisor was Professor Joan Robinson, a formidable and brilliant woman.\u00a0 As I mentioned earlier she was one of a small group of Cambridge economists who had world reputations and she was still in the forefront of this group.\u00a0 She was very small with a bun of grey hair tightly drawn round her head.\u00a0 She was very left-wing and attended a conference in communist China while she was teaching us.\u00a0 Reading one\u2019s weekly essay to her was an ordeal, but stimulating, one was never allowed to get away with any sloppy ideas or expressions.\u00a0 I was very fortunate in having her for my supervisions.\u00a0 If anyone could have got me a First it was her; unfortunately nobody could.\u00a0 Her husband, E.A.G. Robinson, was another economics professor and I went to his lectures once a week.\u00a0 He also worked in the Treasury and his Saturday morning lectures were usually a critique of that days \u2018Economist\u2019 magazine\u2019s editorials and immensely stimulating.\u00a0 One felt one was in touch with the real world; a rare occurrence in lectures on economic theory.\u00a0 He was subsequently very helpful in trying to find me a job.\u00a0 His brother, Christopher, was Bishop of Bombay.\u00a0 I got to know him well when we lived in Delhi.<\/p>\n I worked as hard as my rowing commitments allowed.\u00a0 I used to get up at 5 am every morning (well, most mornings) and worked through till lunch time.\u00a0 That left the rest of the day for rowing; at least that was my summer routine.\u00a0 In the winter and spring, with their shorter days, there were fewer hours available for the river.\u00a0 I coached the Kings College First VIII both in the Lents and the Mays and they earned their oars each time, (i.e. made four bumps).\u00a0 But my winter and spring rowing was not very successful. \u00a0We lost the Light IVs to Lady Margaret and went down one place in the Lent bumping races.\u00a0 But then everything came together in the summer.\u00a0 The May Boat was extremely fast, the fastest of all the college crews.\u00a0 Unfortunately we could not go head of the river as were starting 6th; we did make four bumps, ending up second after Lady Margaret even though we were much faster than them; but that was little consolation.<\/p>\n Immediately after the May Ball we went out in the coxless IV and it went like a dream.\u00a0 We entered the Senior IVs at Reading regatta and won easily.\u00a0 We were clearly the fastest coxless IV in UK at that moment.\u00a0 It was an Olympic year and the crews had not yet been selected.\u00a0 Unlike today when the competition is intense, the whole selection process was comparatively relaxed.\u00a0 There was to be a knock-out series of races at Henley, on a course shortened to 2,000 metres, at the end of June, some two weeks later.\u00a0 We entered.\u00a0 There was a complication, however.\u00a0 Four of the sparemen from the Olympic VIII, who had not made it to the VIII, wanted to put a IV together.\u00a0 One of these was James Crowden, who asked if they might share our coach, Finlay Best.\u00a0 We had to say yes, a big mistake.\u00a0 We lost the final to this crew, rowing under Leander colours.\u00a0 We were devastated as the chance of going to Helsinki was the dream of a lifetime and it had so nearly been within our grasp.\u00a0 I think of all the great regrets of my life this failure to win that race was perhaps the greatest.<\/p>\n This Leander crew, however, were not going to enter for Henley.\u00a0 This left us clear to enter the senior Henley coxless IV event, the Stewards Cup, with a good chance of winning.\u00a0 We also entered the coxless IV event for schools and colleges, the Visitors Cup; as well of course the VIII event, the Ladies.\u00a0 Our chances of winning all three events were high.\u00a0 All started well.\u00a0 In the Ladies we won the heat on Wednesday, beating First and Third Trinity by a length, having led from the start, and the heat on Thursday, beating Magdalen College Oxford by one and a quarter lengths in the fast time of 6 minutes and 54 seconds.\u00a0 In the Stewards we did not race till Friday.\u00a0 In the Visitors also we had a bye on Wednesday and on Thursday the other crew withdrew.\u00a0 Then disaster struck.\u00a0 On Friday the weather conditions changed from calm to stormy with a strong tail wind whipping the water into choppy waves.\u00a0 The way our boat was rigged was for calm conditions, so that when one comes forward the oars are close to the water.\u00a0 In rough conditions this means one catches the waves.\u00a0 Fred, the boatman, raised the level of the rigging but as it turned out he did not raise it sufficiently.\u00a0 We did not have time for a practice outing and when we came to race we were floundering, catching the waves all the way forward, and never able to settle down to a proper rhythm.\u00a0 We were against Lady Margaret, who we not had a chance to bump in the Mays, and they were fast.\u00a0 However, we lost by a third of a length, less than a second, in a fast time.\u00a0 But we were shattered and it was all so unnecessary.\u00a0 The same thing happened in the Stewards.\u00a0 We kept on catching our oars as we came forward, slowing the boat down.\u00a0 We lost to London Rowing Club by 2 \u00bd lengths.\u00a0 The third race of the day was the Visitors.\u00a0 We were feeling tired by this stage but had got used to the conditions.\u00a0 We were racing First and Third Trinity.\u00a0 Half way through the race we clashed oars and the umpire made us stop and restart.\u00a0 But we won by a comfortable margin.\u00a0 So come the last day of the regatta we were only in one event.\u00a0 But we had got things under control by then.\u00a0 We were racing Trinity Oxford, stroked by the Oxford President Christopher Davidge and with another blue at bow.\u00a0 They led us by a length at the quarter mile; we pulled them back to half a length at Fawley and were leading by three quarters of a length at the Mile.\u00a0 We won by a length and three quarters in 7 minutes and 15 seconds, a record time that lasted 13 years.\u00a0 The winning time for the Stewards was 9 seconds slower.\u00a0 If only\u2026<\/p>\n This really ended my active rowing career.\u00a0 I never raced again and any other rowing I did was for fun.\u00a0 I did some more coaching in 1954 and 1955, including the Goldie VIII, but that was about all.\u00a0 Winning the Visitors was a great triumph but it paled beside the losses that seemed so unnecessary and the thrown away chance to represent Great Britain in the Olympics.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> 2013 address is Highwood Corner, Grubwood Lane, Cookham, Maidenhead SL6 9UB<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/a> http:\/\/www.thefivehorseshoes.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Marcus English had been my contemporary at Radley, in Morgans Social.\u00a0 He was a little older than me, but came a term later.\u00a0 I did not know him particularly well at Radley and he did not shine athletically.\u00a0 He came up to Pembroke at the same time as I did and started rowing.\u00a0 Within a year he was stroking the Pembroke Henley VIII and the Visitor\u2019s Cup IV and in 1951 he gained his University Trial cap.\u00a0 He was never a blue.\u00a0 We still keep in touch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Patrick Creswell was son of Meg Hall who was the second wife of my father\u2019s friend Dennis Hall.\u00a0 I think Dennis Hall had just died and Meg had moved to Maidenhead. \u00a0And she and my mother were great friends although my father couldn\u2019t stand her.\u00a0 Patrick took after her and was incredibly fussy.\u00a0 I am not sure why I picked him to come with me (I am sure it was that way round), but I was anxious to get to France.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UNIVERSITY YEARS, 1949 TO 1952\u00a0 I went up to Pembroke College Cambridge at the start of the Michaelmas term in October 1949.\u00a0 Like almost all Freshmen I was allocated a room in College, Room T10, a comparatively modern if small, … Continue reading
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