I was timorous and yet excited about the whole prospect of going up to Oxford. When at Eton, I had established that I was a better than average Greeker - the stream regarded as that with university potential. But I had emerged from that period retarded within certain areas of cultural sophistication. This had shown up badly when I’d been in conversation with those closer to the adult threshold; and I was vulnerable in my naivety. I was hoping to make great strides of progress in these fields over the coming three years, and to be able to flaunt a good honours’ degree after my final examinations, as proof that I was being underrated.

I think that all the undergraduates at Christ Church were invited, singly, to an interview with Mr Dundas sometime over the course of their first few weeks, and I was probably amongst the first. Dundas was one of the senior Fellows of the college, revered, but someone about whom a variety of amusing tales were in circulation reflecting what was regarded as his homosexual interest in young men. I was never quite sure if these interviews were held in some official capacity. It could have been (incongruously) that he was our moral tutor, or something like that. But it was well known how he delighted in taking this opportunity to ask as many questions of a personal nature as he could fit into the time available.

Indeed I realized how this must be the same Dundas whom my father had described as interviewing himself, when he first went up to Christ Church. And the questions on that occasion had been of an exceedingly intimate nature. Henry reports him as asking: "Do you indulge in self-abuse?" - as masturbation was then called. In that Henry had always been told by his mother that boys who did such things finally ended up in lunatic asylums, he was smitten with shame at the question, and replied blushing: "No sir, never." "Then let me congratulate you," said Dundas. "You are only the second boy I’ve met who hasn’t abused himself by the time he came to this college." Henry declares that a whole burden of guilt and terror was thenceforward lifted from his mind.

Inasmuch that I had always masturbated without any sense of guilt, there seemed little danger that my own interview with Mr Dundas would turn out to be anything other than relaxed. It took more the form of a chat between the two of us about Longleat, about Eton, and what I expected to get from life. When I told him that I was hoping to join the Foreign Office, he commented: "Whenever I’m given that as an answer, I always enquire what else." It did make me appreciate how many people simply didn’t conceive me in the role of a diplomat, and I knew in my heart how they might well be right. So the rest of our chat was around the subject of my aspirations as a painter and writer.

Something which I didn’t know at this time was that Dundas had an interest in our family which went further back even than my father, for he had been the private tutor to Henry’s elder brother John - who had been killed in action during the first World War. It was to be revealed to me many years later how there was a correspondence between the two men, preserved at Longleat, which indicated how they travelled abroad together, and how their relationship might possibly be construed as homosexual - in the enthusiasm it displayed for their own male confraternity. I was also to hear how Dundas, in liaison with Trevor-Roper, had reversed Urmson’s inclination not to accept me for entry into Christ Church. But that was now past history - even if I was only to learn about it at a later date.

I would have many advantages over others in finding my feet at Oxford, because there were such a multitude of Old Etonian friends, particularly at Christ Church, and some of them already in their second or third year. There were even two freshmen who had been at the same house as me - namely Tim Rathbone and Colin Clark. And John Ganzoni was there in his second year, but I found we were to see very little of one another nowadays, mingling largely with a different group of friends. Then from other houses there were Bendor Drummond and Ian Rankin, to mention but two of them; and there was James Spooner in his second year. All of these had rooms within a few hundred yards of my own. So there was a potential invitation to camaraderie right from the very start. But I was initially uncertain whether I wanted to avail myself of any of that.

I had in fact been put down to share a study with Bendor - probably because we had both been in the Life Guards together. But I had never liked the prospect of sharing rooms, so I had written to the Steward at Christ Church enquiring if there might not be any possibility of having a room of my own. But it was only due to the intervention of Hugh Trevor-Roper (as I later learnt), that a slight reshuffle of the rooming arrangements were eventually made to furnish me with my own ground floor bedroom and study in Meadows 5: - whilst Bendor was put in to share a study with Ian R in Peckwater Quad.

So I found myself installed in delightfully spacious rooms within the Victorian wing of an elegant Tudor college, with the beauty of the Christ Church Meadow spread panoramically on the other side of my window panes. The Meadows block was more tranquil in spirit than the rowdier atmosphere of Peckwater. And it was tranquillity that I perhaps most needed, at this juncture where I had to sit back and inspect my personal identity before permitting myself any real absorption into a group of friends. The House (as Christ Church is often called) was notable for its diversity of cliques, and being one of the university’s larger colleges there were an abundance of these.

I soon discovered how the style of living was left very much in the individual’s own hands. There was little similarity between the restrictions of discipline that I had known when at Eton, to the freedom for self-expression which existed here at Oxford. And even if an ex-army officer might feel that this was a regressive step towards an adolescent disciplined existence, such rules for conduct were only of a loosely-observed nature - no worse than those to which I had been subjected in the Life Guards. And even if freshmen who were arriving straight from college, were apt initially to continue in the habit of calling their tutors Sir, those who had their National Service behind them generally omitted such deferential forms of address. And the reciprocal use of first names was employed soon enough, once a social relationship had been properly established.

The general arrangement was that each undergraduate might be studying for one, or often two papers during any particular term. Our subject for the week would be set by the tutor who had been appointed to oversee our studies in each subject, and we’d be required to read out the essay upon it which we had composed for the weekly tutorial - a tutorial which might be shared between two, or perhaps three undergraduates within the same field of study. Suggestions for the lectures which we ought to attend were only loosely realized, and the majority of my friends often limited their concern to reading the chapters of the books which had been recommended for attention.

Although in many a case the spell of National Service had interrupted our sense of application to education, the main purpose at Oxford was to take up these specialized subjects for study. But in my case there had been a small confusion to sort out in that Hugh Trevor-Roper had put me down to read History, when it was my intention to read PPE, (Philosophy, Politics and Economics.) This had in fact been sorted out by letter, and I had opted to sit my preliminary examinations in Politics and Economics - having no insight at the start how Philosophy might interest me the most of all. The exams were to be taken at the end of my second term, with the knowledge that failure in them would involve rustication - from which many a student never returned to finish his studies. It was Constitutional History that I had been set to study during this first term, under Robert Blake. It was all an essential part of preparing for the subject of Politics, but the process of learning about it left me uninspired.

I was sharing my tutorials with Anthony Gilbey, who had been a friend of Christopher’s during the brief spell when he was being crammed to pass the Eton Common Entrance exam at Edgarley Hall. But Anthony wasn’t typical of the other undergraduates - having an abundance of personal problems, largely concerning his relationship with his mother. I can remember him sitting in my room getting increasingly drunk, while alternating between avowal of his love, or his hatred for her. All this may have distracted him from any real involvement with his studies.

I was setting out upon this period in my life with a sense of reverence for the surroundings. I felt that we were coming up to this place to improve our minds, so that I was in a fervently receptive mood to novel ideas of any variety. We might expect to receive ample stimulation from our tutors and from all the other dons with whom we were constantly conversing. But we were also there to stimulate each other, by sounding out the ideas which had recently entered our understanding, so that we could make up our minds if we really wished to adopt them as part of an explicit attitude to life. We had our own intellects in the making, and the time was valuable to us.

I realized from the start that so much depended (with regard to the quality that I might expect from my university experience) upon the company that I might choose to frequent. Of an evening, there was often some party to attend, where the drink flowed freely - indeed quite as freely as in the officers’ mess out in Germany, where alcohol was on sale, exempt from any purchase tax. But I felt some caution about plunging straight into the maelstrom of all this social gaiety, despite the fact that during that first Michaelmas term at Christ Church, it seemed that I was bombarded with invitations - often from people that I barely knew. I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be so many cliques at Oxford, who would gladly incorporate me within their embrace. But I felt disinclined at this particular juncture to indulge wholeheartedly in social revelry. That came more gradually, with the emphasis upon party-going building up until it became the most significant part of my life at university - to the detriment of my studies I daresay. But it is of course the social activity which furnishes me with most of the material concerning what I remember about Oxford. So it is that material which preoccupies most of my attention in all that follows.

Something that was new to me was the presence of women in our co-educational environment - even though it fell far short of being on a fifty/fifty basis. There were four colleges for women against the twenty odd colleges for men, without any of the latter having places for both sexes. But it was an agreeable novelty for me to find myself mingling with women almost as much as with men when it came to these social activities after work had been done. It was a question of reopening my acquaintance with [Z] for example, whom I had first met on that weekend with the Duff Coopers in France - in her second year. And there was a whole group of her friends - like Joy Gregory, Sally Marris, Jenny Bush and Kate Ward. I was to learn later that I made a most unfavourable impression on Kate, the first occasion that we met - at a cocktail party - by laughing and saying "Don’t you know?" when she enquired where I lived.

There was sometimes a feeling that I was drifting rudderless into this company of aspirant intellectuals, without any idea of whom I might be addressing, or what they stood for. I was inclined to respond to anyone who knocked upon my door with an instant offer of a drink. And I learnt many years later how this had taken Anthony Howard for example, by surprise. He and a friend had been collecting money to bring a student from the third world to study at Oxford. So he wasn’t expecting the unknown undergraduate who answered the door to impose such hospitality on them. Indeed I remember how we sat there for an awkward five minutes, without anything special to communicate to one another, wondering precisely how it had come about that we were drinking together. And he may well have been disappointed at the end of the session that I didn’t come up with a more generous contribution than 5/- to his collection - having already consumed more than that sum in terms of the monetary value of my alcohol.

I felt myself on the defensive against finding myself bulldozed into the company of any particular group of friends - within an idea that they would be selecting me, rather than the other way round. I had an astute realization of how my contemporaries might perceive my friendship as an asset to suit their own ends. And I might start by describing some of my defensive manoeuvres.

There was the case of [A] for example. He was an American poet. My first encounter with him was when my mother came up to Oxford for the week-end, and Xan took us to have a drink with a variety of his old friends - dating from the time when he had been an (elderly) undergraduate, immediately after the war. Amongst them was his old tutor, Sir Maurice Bowra, and Anthony Baynes who was an artist. [A] was at one of these parties, and he came up to converse with myself and with Daphne. And a few days later, I received a card from [A] inviting me to his rooms for lunch. But I didn’t regard him as enough of a friend for me to take him up on it. So with polite formality, I declined. But he continued to send me invitations, which I found disturbing. I didn’t know how to cope with such persistence. I felt strangely vulnerable to people who had firm ideas on how I should belong within their circle, when I had no such conviction upon the subject.

Another person that I met at one of these particular parties was [B]. He was a bit of a dandy, and perhaps excessively concerned to display the essentials of an elegant British gentility in his social demeanour. Those who didn’t scoff at him described him as intelligent and witty. But he was another one who got it into his head that I might be a suitable companion for the efflorescence of his own personality.

He came round to my rooms one morning and alarmed me by stating that he found me "so lost-in-the-world" in the impression I gave, which inspired him to suggest that what I needed was a friend who (more than myself) was aware how life operated, and who might guide my steps. I saw quite clearly that he was offering me his services as some manner of social secretary, where he would receive his reward from his participation within the parties to which I was invited. But he had erred in his assessment of me. I might display the little-boy-lost look in much of my behaviour, but I was still essentially a loner. I needed to be left to my own devices while seeking to discover my personal salvation. So I hastily remembered that I had a lecture to attend, and took my leave. He never approached me again on the subject.

The publicity which I had previously received in the Sunday Express concerning my life in Paris as an art student had apparently been read by a few undergraduates, and without even knowing that a Junior Common Room Committee was in existence, I found myself elected to stand on it. (I was put up for it by Michael Lord Crawshaw, who of course was aware of my paintings from our days at Eton.) Our task was to buy paintings for a Christ Church collection, which might be borrowed by members of the JCR for hanging in their rooms. I was never cut out to be a committee member of anything, but I attended the occasional meeting where a policy for purchasing was gradually worked out - although by the end of the term we still hadn’t acquired anything at all.

But my reputation as an artist produced one further result. Teddy Millington-Drake who had been at Eton with me, and was now in his final year at Oxford, suggested that we should hold a joint exhibition in the British Council’s rooms in St Giles. (His father had been an eminent ambassador - to Uruguay amongst other places. So the use of these rooms was on offer without charge.) I agreed to this, although I subsequently realized that this had been an error. It was really that Teddy saw it as a means of conjuring up some additional publicity for his own artistic endeavours. And whereas he had accumulated an ample number of pleasantly framed drawing-room pictures, reminiscent of Dufy perhaps, which it was his intention to exhibit and to sell, my own works were of a starker, more Expressionist variety. Nor did I wish to sell them unless I were to be offered a price for them which I could hardly refuse. And that isn’t the best of attitudes for an artist to hold, when approaching his first exhibition.

Teddy saw to it that we obtained the media coverage he thought appropriate. (I was quoted in one gossip column as saying: "I don’t know how much I can decently ask.") Teddy had also persuaded Alexander Dunluce, who was another young viscount at Christ Church, to come in on the exhibition with us - although at that date he had only just commenced painting in oils, and he had yet to discover his eventual painting style. But with two viscounts lined up alongside himself, there was an adequate curiosity about the paintings we might put on display from magazines like The Tatler. And they duly came up to photograph those who attended the opening night’s party - which turned out to be an Oxford celebration like many another. Their account of the evening included a page of photographs, with captions, and it read as follows.

Three young artists of Oxford University held an exhibition of paintings and drawings at the British Council, St Giles. On the eve of the opening they entertained friends to cocktails and received many congratulations on their venture.

It was a painful evening as far as I myself was concerned. My canvasses were just nailed up on the wall. My prices were a lot higher than Teddy’s and, whereas his paintings were selling quite well, there were few interested enquiries with regard to mine. There was only one serious review of the exhibition, which I think came from The Oxford Mail.

Teddy Millington-Drake, in his drawings, shows that he can exploit tenuous line to good effect in his study of buildings in Granada, giving them an unexpected weight and solidity, although in the Piazza d’San Marco subject, this meagreness of line becomes unconvincing.

Both the painters Alexander Weymouth and Alexander Dunluce favour heftily-thick impasto and tend to slap on colour for colour’s sake, Viscount Weymouth often following too closely in the wake of Matthew Smith and Jack Yeats, without possessing either the joyousness or personality of the first, or the poetic magic of the second. He can however, express with strong individuality elderly character and physiognomy.

This latter comment was no doubt in reference to the early works that I had painted when at Eton - such as the portraits of Nanny Marks and Miss Vigers, a number of which I had included within my entry. But it was discouraging to feel that these were attracting the critic’s attention, rather than anything which I had produced more recently. I was left with the feeling that I had been persuaded against my better judgement into making a bid for recognition prematurely, which had simply backfired on me for lack of any public interest. It served to augment my distaste for putting my talent on public display, in that I saw how I was merely courting rejection. Surely I didn’t need to open myself to such self-exposure - or not until I might be truly ready for it?

I prance a pretty step in tip-toe dance,
glancing with anxious eyes into haughty faces -
embraces on offer if I juggle my deft feet
to meet their exacting prickled expectations.
Chasing my own star of immortality,
I gallop the bridle-path I half saw
in the sworn silence of a night vision, courting
derision (obscenely) if I’m seen to stumble or fall.
Mauled by the cageless tiger of my own doubt,
I must stoutly venture ever onwards, bonded
to ambition in seeking admission to Parnassian heights,
fighting grim battles, within and without.
But ne’er again (if I’m to win this fight)
should I set treasures down for them to slight.

Having made one false step, it wasn’t long before I was making the next. It was at one of the parties which I had attended in my mother’s company, when I had probably drunk more wine than was good for me, that I was approached by Desmond Guinness whom I had known slightly at Eton. Anyway he was now urging me to join him and his girl-friend Mariga von Wurtemburg, in a singing sketch that he had been invited to perform in the charity concert that Ned Sherrin was producing, for OUDS, to collect money for The Greek Earthquake Appeal - a recent disaster which was much in public focus. The suggestion arose because I had broken into song at the party we were attending. And Desmond - always the first to flatter, or deride - had urged me to give more public display of my talent. At that stage of the party, I fell for it and told him that I might well participate.

Unknown to myself, Desmond had long been seeking to participate in an OUDS production, but had hitherto received little encouragement from that quarter. My own offer to participate may have swung the balance for him however. Anyway he turned up at my rooms a few days later to say that we were now committed. I endeavoured to find a formula whereby I might back out, and declared that I would only participate if he managed to persuade half a dozen people to sing in chorus. And I was horrified to learn later in the day that he had succeeded in that task. Desmond made it clear to me that it would now look bad, after all the efforts he had made to meet my conditions, if I now declined. So reluctantly I agreed to line up with the others on the stage.

I did have considerable misgivings when he listed the other participants. Apart from (the Honourable) Desmond and (Princess) Mariga, there was (Lady) Deidre Hare. That sounded reputable enough. Deidre even presented a slightly prim image to the world, to cover the wilder side of her nature. And (Prince) Rupert Lowenstein was an endearingly old young man. And then there was Teddy Millington-Drake with his camp behaviour. Then finally there were two of Oxford’s more alcoholic freshmen, in the persons of John (Viscount) Pollington and Anthony Gilbey. I should have felt warned from the start that any manner of public performance with this group would do my image no manner of good.

Ned Sherrin from Exeter College came round to see me, and he took it for granted that I would want to contribute even more of my talents to this worthy cause. He had heard how I was an artist, and he wanted me to paint a poster for the concert which would be displayed at Carfax. I had never painted a poster in my life, nor did my style of painting lend itself to such endeavour. But Ned wasn’t the sort of man that one could refuse. I found myself being bulldozed into co-operation, and ran up a pathetic little poster which the two of us knew only too well would look absurd if displayed on the bill-board at Carfax. I think it ended up in the window of some local car show-room - largely unobserved. But it made me aware of the mounting sense of exploitation to which my participation might expose me.

As in the case of the painting exhibition at St Giles, I soon discovered that my principal value to the Greek Earthquake Appeal was in the publicity for the concert which could be latched on to my name. Desmond had selected us for our titles, and Ned had maliciously given us an atrociously snobbish song to sing, the first verse of which was as follows.

Let’s get into Debrett - oh yes, let’s.
We’ve a long way to go
to become comme il faut,
but we want to form one of this Set,
called a "rather chic clique".
So we’ll learn the Debrett etiquette,
buy up popped peerage banners
and learn a few manners.
The going may be hard,
but we won’t be debarred
from our wish to be smart
in the style of Debrett.

The only way that such a song might appear humorous on stage would be for persons outside the ranks of Debrett to be sending up such snob values with a camp satirisation of the attitude. It was never likely to seem humorous when persons genuinely featured in Debrett were asked to send up the attitude of those vainly aspiring to be included in our number. But I’m afraid that it was typical of Desmond and Mariga that they should have judged the matter differently. And I unwisely neglected to dampen their enthusiasm for the song, while there was still time to insist that another be selected for us to sing.

We furnished the substance for the publicity which Ned Sherrin required for his concert. Our names (with titles) were trotted out in the gossip columns of several papers, with the suggestion that people might want to buy tickets in support of the Earthquake Appeal. An example from I know not which paper has survived in my photo album, and it reads as follows.

A bunch of upper-crust Oxford undergraduates are up to a rare bit of fun. For one night only they are staging a revue - proceeds to the Greek earthquake fund - and the highlight is to be a playlet called `Let’s get into Debrett’. The stars? Undergraduates Viscount Weymouth, Lady Deidre Hare and the Hon Desmond Guinness. They must love the book. As a basis for a play, it is about as promising as a telephone directory. Too many characters!

By then we had played the part that Ned Sherrin required of us, and the concern now was to see that we didn’t manage to impose ourselves too intrusively upon the scheduled evening’s entertaiment. But he had failed to take due note of the degree of our unprofessional attitude in these matters; and as the hour of the concert approached, I think we were all having misgivings about the appropriateness of our participation.

In usual undergraduate style, we supposed that our nerves might be settled by a few glasses of champagne. But some of us took it rather further than that - with John Pollington in any case reaching a state when he was staggering all over the place. Then at the crucial juncture while we were waiting in the wings to be summoned up on stage, some reporters were ushered in to ask us for our thoughts now that the ordeal was truly upon us. Deidre (utterly sober) was pleading with me to share with her the responsibility of talking to them, for it did indeed seem that I was less inebriated than some of the others. We had all dressed ourselves up in what we regarded as camp nouveau riche attire, but with Teddy the behaviour came rather more naturally, and he was embarrassing me greatly with some of his comments about the verses we had to sing. "It says here that we’re all the same. Whoever heard of anything so ridiculous. I’m not the same as anybody - especially not with them." And all this was with the reporters listening in on us.

There was one rather attractive young woman, and I did my best to win her favour. I urged her not to set too much significance on their present antics - for some of them were running round as if they were playing choo-choo trains, spilling a lot of champagne from their glasses in the process. I told her they were really a decent lot, suggesting that she might find some kindly things to say - a suggestion to which she neglected to reply. The interview was terminated by us being summoned up on stage. But some of the party were by now out of control. When the curtain went up, there were those amongst us who seemed to believe that the humour in our sketch should lie in our truthful depiction of inebriation. Some of us were singing while some were not, and there were a few jeering cat-calls from the audience. Deidre was standing there with an expression of martyrdom upon her beautiful face, while Teddy chugged forward to the front of the stage and made threatening gestures at the audience with his emptied champagne bottle - as if he was thumping them with a tulip. Now that we had all quite evidently forgotten the words of our ditty, the curtain came down with precipitous haste. And we could discern the sound of some booing amidst the laughter.

In the general silence off-stage, a mood of sudden soberness had returned. But we were now faced with a predicament. We had purchased a row of tickets in the front of the stalls, from which we had been intending to watch the rest of the show. But the act of re-entering that company after the reception they had given us was quite daunting. I have never been one to neglect taking up whatever I have already paid for, so I announced that I in any case would be taking my seat; and the rest all trooped in behind me - interrupting a comedian in the middle of his act. He paused and gazed at us dramatically as we filed past. Then turning to the audience (and to loud applause), he enquired whether there was a doctor in the house. After that, we were permitted to settle back into a state of comparative anonymity.

Our performance was not excused from media attention - to the extent of saying that our act was "rightly hissed from the stage". Pollington was described as "giving a drunken pirouette on the stage", and Teddy’s antics were also noted. But they did not single me out for special opprobrium. I was made aware by some of my friends however, that I had done my image no good. Or as Hugh Lawson put it: "I hear that some of us, Alexander, have been making a greater fool of ourselves than others!"

Something entirely new to me nowadays, was the way undergraduates within my own circle of friends were in fact upon the payroll of the media’s various gossip columns. None of this was out in the open, but the names of particular friends were sometimes whispered as suspect. It was thought that they had discovered how this was an easy way to supplement the allowances they received from their parents, which often proved inadequate to support the sudden enrichment to all social life. But such espionage upon our daily activities wasn’t something to which anyone might readily admit.

I had one good friend in the person of Jimmy Skinner who indulged in such activities rather more openly. He invited me to some drinks where "a friendly journalist" wanted some photographs taken for the use of some press agency, of undergraduates wearing colourful waistcoats. And knowing how I had my Pop waistcoats from Eton within my wardrobe here at Oxford, Jimmy urged me to attend. As far as I was concerned, it was a party like any other. So I turned up suitably attired. And on arrival, I learnt that there were other items as well that were due to be publicized - the use of long cigarette-holders, and Madeira as the fashionable beverage. Both Desmond G and Rupert L were also amongst the guests - in addition to Michael Moseley. So I didn’t feel that I was on my own.

I did take the precaution of enquiring as to where these photographs might appear, and I was given an assurance that this wasn’t for the home market. It was the continental press who were apparently showing some interest in what the fashionable trends in social life at Oxford might be. It all seemed harmless enough, but I noted how (as the party progressed) the four of us were being grouped together for what appeared to be special attention from the cameraman. And after a few additional glasses of Madeira, none of this seemed to matter very much. Along with the others, I was even responding to his request to strike some rather more elegant poses - not that I took this to the exhibitionistic degree that I observed in Desmond’s case.

It was in fact many months before I became aware that an article had in fact appeared, containing these photographs. I believe they came out in some German-language magazine. The first intimation that I had done my image no good came when Desmond informed me that he had received a letter from some man in Switzerland, who suggested they had much in common and should become friends. (Desmond claimed that he had replied, true to form, that he was not in the habit of striking up friendships with anyone so common.) But I was also to hear much later how others had seen the article, and had been surprised to see me posing in such company in what appeared like advertisements for long cigarette-holders.

I had by now woken up to the realization that I was getting myself identified more closely than might be regarded as healthy with Desmond Guinness’ set of friends. Desmond had long been blackballed for membership of the Grid-iron Club, which prided itself upon furnishing the most conventional and traditional atmosphere of a London club, exclusively for men, for Oxford undergraduates prior to their arrival upon the London scene. Provided that you had emerged from the right educational background, and hadn’t made any enemies, you were liable to be elected before many terms had passed. But men like Desmond enjoyed a certain notoriety, which rendered them ineligible for such membership, and it was becoming apparent to me how I must choose between the two groups.

Desmond had in fact suggested to me that I ought to buy tickets for the Grid-iron dance, and to hold a dinner-party for it. He would see that everyone repaid me of course. But I was friendly with several people on the committee, so I in fact enquired from Adrian Swire if I might be permitted to buy rather more than the two tickets which had been offered to me. He replied cautiously that this would be fine - so long as I didn’t bring along the likes of Guinness and his friends. It was a warning which I noted. It dawned upon me how Desmond was in fact just using me to try and gain entry through doors that were not open to him. And in terms of schoolday friendship, I owed a greater sense of loyalty to the likes of Adrian than I ever did to Desmond - whose wit often struck me as cruel, even bitchy. It gave me food for thought - almost as if I was standing at a road forking between divergent sets of friends. And I reported back to him that I couldn’t obtain any extra tickets, so that he would have to seek them for himself.

Then there was an episode with John Pollington which disquieted me. He was well on the road to becoming an alcoholic at that time. Anthony Gilbey had brought him round to drain some of my whiskey, but he fell asleep on my sofa - remaining after Anthony had departed. I didn’t want him there all night, so I attempted quite gently to arouse him from his stupor. But when his eyes opened, to see me standing there above him, smiling and reaching out to him, he appeared to panic for a second - almost as if he was about to strike out at me. And I realized how in his perception of the scene, he was supposing that I was leaning forward to make a sexual pass at him. That look was only there for an instant in his eye, before he had managed to make sense of my kindly request that he should go home. But it involved a misconception which I noted.

There were other groups too, who were seeking to include me within their particular set. For example, it would have been quite open to me to continue with the sports where I had previously excelled. I was approached at one party by someone who was in the university’s boxing team, and he informed me how they had been told (I know not by whom) to watch out for my arrival. And if I had set my mind to it, I might well have earned my half-blue at boxing. Nor would it have been a ridiculous ambition if I had set my sights on a rowing blue. But I had decided to turn my back on all that. I was too highly strung by temperament. I no longer wished to contend with all that excess of anxiety which had always afflicted me, prior to any sportive competition. I wanted to enjoy myself at Oxford. I wanted the chance to identify the ideas that really suited me, in the relaxed company of friends where I could savour life’s entertainment.

Roger Liddiard was the undergraduate at Christ Church who was concerned to recruit others for rowing, and he paid several visits to my rooms in an endeavour to persuade me to change my mind. He knew of my success as an oarsman at Eton, and he had intimated that he could guarantee me a place in the crew for Christ Church. But I wasn’t even prepared to give it a try. There was a greater prospect for peace of mind in turning my back on all that.

Then came an incident which served to distance me even more, and somewhat embarrassingly, from that set. By now Bendor and Ian were firmly grouped within the hard-drinking group who patronized the Carlton Club - in addition to the Grid-iron. The dominant personalities perhaps being William (Viscount) Stormont and Adam Kwiatkowski. And on a particular evening when I was accompanying them for a drink at this club, the bar closed, but the barman permitted us to continue drinking after hours - perhaps for no better reason than that William was the club’s President. But the rowing set also frequented this club, and Roger Liddiard turned up with a group of them on this particular night - only to be told by the others who were already upstairs by the bar that the club was now closed. And this led to an altercation, with the crowd downstairs protesting vigorously that the club couldn’t be closed when they could see for themselves that we were occupying it.

The situation became unpleasant at one moment. Adam had a reputation for throwing his weight around, for he had been the captain of the university’s boxing team - although that period was now behind him. But it was generally noted how he furnished the muscle power to friends of his choosing amongst those with easy access to the social scene - with Bendor and Ian, (of whom the latter became increasingly bellicose after a few drinks nowadays,) being the two freshmen whose company he had recently cultivated. But in this case it was Bendor who had started the brawling, after an exchange of remarks with an undergraduate from Worcester College who had been behaving in an equally drunken manner - a rowing man as it turned out. And when it seemed evident that the latter was about to be joined by a group of his friends, Adam and his party weren’t going to allow these rowing men to enter the club; and they were holding the high ground at the top of the stairs - preparing to fling back the proclaimed intruders if they should advance too far.

The whole business was blatantly unfair, and if I was to be concerned with justice, then I would have felt obliged to support them in their plea for entry. But it wasn’t on a question of justice that the dispute would be resolved. This was a territorial dispute, with two groups endeavouring to assert their dominance over the other by fair means or foul. And inasmuch that I had arrived there in the company of the first group, my sense of loyalty was biased. I did in fact proclaim that I was neutral, when asked to show my colours by the undergraduate from Worcester College. But he wouldn’t accept my neutrality. He declared that if I wasn’t for them, then I was against them. I repeated that I was neutral. But I think my smile must have irked him, since he suddenly came to grips with me, crying: "If you’re on our side, then you sodding well come down there with us!" Confronted by his overt hostility, I defended myself and shoved him down the stairs while remaining on the top landing with Bendor and crowd. Roger was reprimanding his friend, saying: "No you don’t want to fight with Alexander; he’s a rowing man." The dispute fizzled out when Roger’s group decided to move on to some friendlier haunt. But the gulf between us had widened. There was virtually no chance at all now that I’d ever take to the river again.

Sometimes it did strike me that my hard-drinking friends were perhaps a dangerous crowd with whom to associate. Their behaviour on occasions was distinctly antisocial, as the following anecdote about Ian might indicate. It is also indicative of how the group divisions within an elitist establishment like Oxford, were still in evidence - despite the approximation in class origin between those who found themselves as contemporary undergraduates at the House.

Ian was perhaps typical of the more class-conscious type of Old Etonian Guardee, in that he envisaged the social order as Us versus the Rest. And one didn’t have to be far down the scale from Us, to be designated as one of the trogs - or troglodytes. The people who emerged from their little subterranean dwellings to threaten our established social order. Even here at the House, the trogs were often recognizable from the college scarves which they so proudly flaunted, or from the school blazers (instead of boating-jackets) which they wore. But it may have been more accurate to suppose that the group divisions were there for those sensitive to such issues, to discern from whatever distinctions in fashion or behaviour that the eye could dictate.

It may have been as a result of the room-shuffle which occurred as a result of me being given a room in Meadows, instead of in Peckwater, but it had worked out that there were a couple of undergraduates whom Ian regarded as trogs on the same staircase as himself. And at the start of the term, they had been full of complaints concerning the rowdiness of his entertaining and of the late hours which he kept. But Ian wasn’t prepared to listen to any criticism from mere trogs. This was our world - not theirs - and they didn’t know their place. Indeed, Ian felt so irascible on the subject that, on finding some note full of complaints in his pigeonhole one morning, he decided to teach it to them. After filling a silver flagon which he possessed with his own urine, he opened the bedroom door of the undergraduate who had signed the letter to find that he was still in bed. He just flung the contents over him, and departed. And to all accounts, he never received any further messages of complaint from that quarter.

Not that Ian was doing any good for himself in the eyes of the powers that be at Christ Church. He was continually up before the Senior Censor to furnish his version of events after incidents of this gravity had been drawn to the attention of the authorities. It began to look as if Ian was one of those people who would not last out his full days at Oxford. Nor perhaps would the majority of his friends - in which category I was indeed to be numbered. But there was a part of me that was veering away from all that side to life, in my hope that I might come to grips with my own identity - which was the potential recluse in me. So I was holding back from too much overt alignment with such friends, from a sense of caution that it might involve some wrong direction in life.

On the other hand this was a group which overlapped with the Bullingdon Club - that long-established focal point for all blue-blooded identity at Oxford, with an emphasis perhaps upon point-to-point racing fixtures and the blood sports. These weren’t my own line of interest nowadays, but there were good friends of mine from Eton days at the top of its organization. David Faulkener was currently its President, with Dickon Lumley as its Secretary. Social invitations were always forthcoming to me from that quarter, and their cordiality seemed natural to me. Moreover the Bullingdon was the name that I’d heard the most quoted within the recollections of my father’s friends - giving it a standing which I knew how some revered. But in those days it had included the Aesthetes - as Henry’s friend Brian Howard had named their group. It had struck me that Desmond Guinness regarded himself as a modern day Brian Howard, although the doors of the Bullingdon nowadays could hardly be said to lie open to that crowd. Not that this concerned me, but my own sense of friendliness extended in so many directions that I was reluctant to feel that it should be curtailed.

Then there were other friends who were new within my life - like (Prince) [H], the son of a Russian emigre now deceased. He was by no means an outsider to the clan, in that he was a childhood friend of Adrian Swire. The two of them were at University College, with Adrian in his third year, and [H] in his second. I had in fact met [H] briefly out in Paris, when Adrian had come to look me up. They had eventually tracked me down in the Jeux de Paume museum - where they were amused to find me staring with deep concentration at an empty space on the wall from which Van Gogh’s self-portrait had been removed for exhibition elsewhere. Anyway, following on from that initial encounter, [H] had invited me to a dinner party that he was giving in his rooms, to investigate perhaps whether or not I might be the right material to become a rather special friend of his.

There were many who wouldn’t have wanted [H] for a friend, since he had a reputation for attempting to shock people by the enormities of his behaviour. Originating perhaps in a sense of psychological discomfort within his own person, he traded upon the uncertainties which he could arouse in the minds of those he met - as to whether they should be taking him at face value, and display the intended outrage, only to find themselves wrong-footed at what was suddenly revealed as a joke, to the accompaniment of huge guffaws from [H]’s laughter. Even after such a performance however, the doubts remained as to where the true [H] might be identified. This could be tiresome at times, but he was a man who was always bursting at the seams with vitality.

At this particular dinner-party he was keeping the other guests amused by talking to me in an ultra-serious vein, drawing me out upon the subject of this and that in a manner that might stir up others who were present. He got me talking about homosexuality for instance, in a manner that displayed my cultural inhibitions on the subject - while neglecting to make me aware how [C] and [D] two of the Old Etonians present, were now quite openly of that inclination. There was perhaps something delightfully spontaneous in my replies to his questions, amounting to a display of naive candour with touches of unconscious humour in some of what I said. I can remember retorting to his query concerning what degree I thought that I might take by telling him, quite curiously, that I hadn’t decided yet.

This marked the opening of my friendship with [H], although I remained in some doubt as to whether this was something that I’d value. [H] had mingled with the whole batch of Etonians from my generation at Oxford, so he had been fed with the notion that there were some expectations for me - as an artist or whatever. But he had also latched on to the idea that I regarded myself, immodestly, as a potential genius of some description. And it was this above all else which kindled his curiosity concerning what kind of a person I might really be, for he himself - while reading Geology - was a talented pianist who had ambitions to make his name as a composer.

There were a variety of occasions when [H] dropped round to see me in my rooms at Meadows after this. He registered at the start that he was full of admiration for the canvasses I had painted while in Paris, some of which I had pinned around the walls of my study. But with [H], I never knew whether his admiration might be genuine, or whether he was just having me on - so as to explode in derisive laughter once he had got me taking him seriously. He was probably just hedging his bets in such behaviour, leaving it open whichever verdict he might ultimately reveal as indicative of his true judgement. My best safeguard always was to ignore the admiration as much as any subsequent ridicule. I just treated it as [H]-talk - with obscure friendliness, as if it came from a Martian.

One of [H]’s great delights was to pose as a pansy. But it seemed that I could never know for sure if the pose might not be covering up something of which he was inwardly aware - then enjoying the private joke in transferring his own uncertainty on the issue to others, filling them with an anxiety of their own. At a party given in some rooms off Peckwater, I watched him later dancing round the quadrangle with a pair of women’s corsets pulled up over his trousers. And he was accosting all the trogs who ventured too close with an ambivalent coyness, his heavy-limbed body giving the appearance of some Neanderthal humanoid in drag - until they had scurried past. But his performances were repetitive, and many found him tiresome. I felt caution upon the idea of permitting him to become too close a friend.

But there was always something that I admired in [H], perhaps relating to his devil-may-care brashness - akin to candour I daresay, even if he was never really out in the open. I have one most memorable image of him from a party that was being given in New College. A number of us were carousing out on the main quadrangle when someone offered [H] a bet that he wouldn’t dare strip naked. It would have been against [H]’s principles to decline such a wager, and within seconds he had removed his last stitch of clothing.

I think it was Jimmy who had, in the meantime, been edging round the circle whispering that we should respond to his signal by diving for one of his garments once they were lying there on the ground, and running off with them. I made the error of running off with his trousers however, so it was me that he most needed to pursue. The porter at the main gate could hardly believe his eyes as I ran past him pursued by some man who wasn’t even wearing any underpants. It was only upon reaching the narrow lane outside that I relented, halting so that he could snatch the trousers back from me. And others then appeared with the remainder of his attire. The lane was deserted at this belated hour. But in any case none of us regarded it as a mean trick to have played upon him, in that it was no worse than the outrages that he was constantly perpetrating upon others.

In some ways I felt most at ease when in the company of the particular friends who had been with me in the Life Guards. Well Bendor might be all too evidently heading for a departure from the Oxford scene, in that he was seldom sober nowadays. He was apt to make a joke about it, but some of his stories about seeing small objects creeping around his rooms sounded too much like the onset of delirium tremens. A safer brand of company was to be found in the persons of Laurence Kelly at New College, or of Tim Sainsbury at Worcester College. And inasmuch that Laurence was already in his second year, there was some tendency for us to pick up on our friendships (where they were new ones that is to say) along the tracks that he had already made. And these were all upon the line of association with members of the Grid-iron Club. And the very fact of accompanying some member of the club to have lunch there, within the premises of a disused chapel off Beaumont Street, rapidly acquainted us with the broader circle of that set.

I retained some doubts about Laurence in his integrity as a friend. There was always some feeling that he was too sensitive to the vagaries of potential self-advancement, in which personal loyalties wouldn’t count for much if they ran foul of what he discerned as his personal interest. There was also a financial meanness about him which jarred against my own notions of fair play. But whether at Oxford or up in London, I was aware how we both enjoyed the same manner of social revelry. I might expect to find him revelling in the same manner of places. So I valued my friendship with him.

With Tim Sainsbury, it was marginally different. He had always been less liable to frequent the same London balls as ourselves. (Marginally less likely to be invited to them I suppose.) Far more than with Laurence however, I knew that he was reliable - that I could count upon any commitment that he made. And there was something sensible about him all round. We might tease him about his sedately conservative convictions on the subject of both politics and religion, (C of E in contrast to Laurence’s Catholicism.) but I respected him. And in some matters I was aware how I could learn from him. It was Tim who advised me on which classical records I should buy, so that I could begin to discern between the musical styles of the greatest composers. And as a result, just gradually, I began to compile a small collection of such records.

This whole business of trying to discern which might be the right set of friends for me was protracted over more than this first term at Oxford. Nor was there any sudden discovery as to where the most valuable group might be identified. It was more a question of gradually shifting my association rather more in one direction than another, without making any deliberate decisions. But the net result was the same. By the end of this term, I was seeing rather less of Desmond and his friends than I had done during my initial weeks at the university. And I was perhaps firming up on the Grid-iron crowd. But all this had happened without really thinking about it.

I still had a feeling however, that I hadn’t yet found my right identity at Oxford. There was a secret hankering inside me to regain some of the glorious imagery I had displayed during my final year at Eton. I wanted people to be reminded of it in some way. Anyway that’s my explanation for an incident which took place during the final week of this Michaelmas term.

I was attending a party in Peckwater where many of my friends were in attendance. Towards the end of it a commotion could be heard outside, and I was told it was because a group of trogs had been trying to gatecrash an entry. Ian Rankin had angered them by slamming the door so that it caught someone’s foot in the gap. By the time I went out to observe what was going on, Ian was in the process of exchanging insults with them. It had reached a point where they were suggesting (with some degree of stilted inebriation) that he step outside the college, to answer for his insults like a man. Ian was in fact labouring under a disadvantage. Being someone who was apt to fling provocative remarks in all directions, coupled with punches whenever tempers had flared to such a pitch, and he was currently suffering from a couple of broken ribs - the result of a car crash which will be described later. So he was unusually restrained from his habitual resort to force as the ultimate arbiter in social conflict.

Adam Kwiatkowski was another who was standing outside, bandying insults with the three undergraduates whom it was alleged had been trying to gatecrash our party. And in response to their pugilistic challenges, he was taking the line that a boxing blue wouldn’t so demean himself as to resort to street fighting, but if they wanted such a demonstration from him, then they would have to turn up at the gym next morning so that the matter could be resolved with a referee in the boxing ring.

Listening to all this, I felt that the whole situation was bogus. All parties were just pretending that they were going to have a fight - to appear gloriously macho in their friends’ eyes. And it irked me in particular how Adam was so evidently revered for his boxing abilities without allowing them to be demonstrated. I hadn’t participated as yet within the exchanges, but once Ian had departed for his rooms, and the rest of my friends had rejoined the party, I found myself as the sole representative of our group, standing there with the gatecrashing trio. And they were continuing to express their sense of outrage against all of us. They had only been trying to find the right rooms for a party to which they had genuinely been invited, to find themselves so grossly insulted. And it was all such arrogance. Who did we think we were? Did we suppose that men at Christ Church were somehow better than those at St John’s? And as for that rotten shit who had been so abusive, he was beneath contempt - running off home to avoid what was coming to him. I retorted quite simply (and quietly): "He’s a better man than you!" This was followed by a momentary silence while they looked me over. Then their ringleader proclaimed: "Would you care to defend that remark with your honour by stepping outside the college?" I said: "Yes, if you wish." And we all trooped out through Canterbury gate to the patch of cobble stones round the corner on the right.

It was mildly alarming the way one of them had shouted up at one of the windows in Canterbury: "It’s all right, we’ve got one of them!" I did feel a bit solitary, and it occurred to me that I might be foolhardy in accepting such a challenge. But I had by now ventured beyond the point of no return. We removed our coats and stood facing one another. He intimated that I could strike the first blow, to which I replied that it was for the challenger to begin. Only then did we start trading blows in earnest. Although perhaps heavier than myself, he was shorter in stature, and it was evident to me from the start that he found it difficult to contend with my straight left. Having rushed at me swinging hooks which merely landed on my arms, he switched to wrestling tactics, closing up into bear-hug clinches, where I was happy to find that I could match his own strength. But there were several occasions when we were rolling together on the ground. When he was on top, his two friends were cheering him on to give me my desserts. But on the occasions when I was on top, they shouted that we should break, and climb to our feet to start afresh. Not that this really mattered since he was wearying faster than myself, and I had reached a point when I was picking off my punches from a distance, and finally hooking him to the head so that he was visibly staggering.

I knew that the fight was now won, and I was just going in for the kill when I went down. There was no question of me having been hit. It only occurred to me later how I hadn’t even tripped, but that one of his friends had kicked my legs from under me as I sprang forwards. And I had landed up with my left leg twisted under me, and hurting. It was with some difficulty that I scrambled to my feet, finding to my embarrassment that I could no longer place any weight upon my left foot. Standing upon my right leg, I prepared for my opponent to recover sufficiently to rejoin battle. But when he did so, I fell for the second time and had to admit to my incapacity to respond - at which the man who had been standing behind me promptly stepped forwards to say there was no need in that the fight had now been won by his friend.

A mood of condescending affability now prevailed upon their side. They all wanted to shake my hand for having the courage to answer for the behaviour of my friends. I intimated that I wasn’t happy with my performance, since I was well able to take good care of myself in a fight - having in fact been last year’s Army Officers’ welterweight boxing champion. My opponent then revealed that he was a rugger blue named [E]. (I know not whether this might have been his first or second name.) They even wanted me to attend a party which they would be holding next day at St.John’s, although privately I didn’t feel that it would be appropriate that I should attend. There was much hand-pumping and they took their leave. I then perceived that two of my friends from the party had followed me out to discover, if belatedly, how I had been faring at their hands. These were Alexander Dunluce and John Jolliffe. And on discovering that I needed assistance, they aided me to hop back to my rooms in Meadows.

There followed one of the most uncomfortable nights in my experience. But I realized by morning that my leg must have been fractured - a long spiral fracture of the lower tibia as it turned out, when I went to have it set at the Radcliffe Infirmary. My left leg was encased in plaster to just above the knee, and I had to walk with the assistance of crutches. But it was the end of term now, with the Michaelmas vacation ahead of me in which to recover.

And on this occasion, I was aware from the start how I had done my public image at Oxford some good. There was an amused surprise at the way I had conducted myself. The fact of me being the only one actually to have taken up their challenge, when there had been such a lot of waffle in verbal exchange, with no one else fulfilling any of their boasts, had impressed some of the party-goers. It was also remarked that I had been one of the few people who had been perfectly sober amongst all those who were squabbling outside. This depicted me as a doer rather than a talker perhaps.

I scorn the waffling burble of puffed up turkeys,
working the windbag in vaunted gobbling boasts,
most of it insubstantial and bereft of factual
action - promised pacts with let-out clauses.
When wars are waged, the glory goes to the man
whose hand plies the knife, or trips the trigger -
bigger than life with an omnipresence bolder
in cold-tempered purpose than any Goliath.
Crying for the best battle with a trumpet tongue,
I’d sprung the balustrade of safety - the champion
rampant with a sword in hand, brandished, cleaving,
leaving a trail behind me of dismembered foes.
It cost me bruises and a broken bone -
quite cheap as access to a hero’s throne!

What irked me somewhat was the way Adam K came round to commiserate on my misfortune, declaring that I’d been a fool. "You had only to call out, and we’d have all come charging to your assistance." These were much the thoughts one might have expected from someone who had in fact ducked out from such engagement. But I didn’t like the idea that he should think I would like to be seen shielding myself behind him. Or perhaps it was just his way of telling me that I shouldn’t be intruding upon his own territory as a pugilist.

In any case I felt that my first term had been concluded on a mildly glamorous note, and I was happy to leave it at that. I cannot claim that I was acquiring any liking for the subject that I’d been reading. (Constitutional History was just about as stodgily boring as any that I might have chosen.) But I was just beginning to find my own niche within all these overlapping sets of undergraduates - which was in any case some manner of starting point for my social life here at Oxford.

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