UNIVERSITY YEARS, 1949 TO 1952 

I went up to Pembroke College Cambridge at the start of the Michaelmas term in October 1949.  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.  It had a good view looking over the court and beyond that to Hall.  It had a gas fire and a bed and table but that is about all.  In my first letter home I ask if Tom Gummer could bring some of my Peter Scott pictures to make it look less bare.  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.

My companion on this floor was Bobby King.  A large, jovial character from Merchant Taylors, a couple of months older than me.  He got his rugger blue in 1950, and we read economics together.  Great fun!

When I first went up I did not know what I was going to read.  Since taking an English scholarship I had always assumed I would read English.  My father was dead against this and wanted me to read something more useful; like law.  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.  My letter home announcing this justifies the decision not to do three years of law by saying that ‘the first year is all Roman Law and useless anyway.  I hope you don’t mind, but it suits me’.  (I ended up reading economics for all three years as I was finding it interesting and it fitted in with my rowing.)  It’s amazing to me, in what seems the modern obsession with what subject one should read, how casually this decision was made.

I was totally at a loss what to do those first days, bored even.  I don’t think lectures began for about the first ten days.  I was evidently not at a loss for friends as my letters say ‘Ever 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…I spend most of the time wandering about the town, trying not to spend too much money, learning my way about and visiting various people’.

It did not take me long to find my way down to the river and start rowing.  Even before my trunk had arrived, with my rowing clothes, or my bicycle, I borrowed some clothes and went out sculling.  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.  This was a University Trial VIII.  I did not last long in that; I guess I was too overweight.  However, I was soon in a college trial VIII.  The President of the Pembroke College Boat Club (PCBC) was James Crowden, with whom I subsequently became firm friends.  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.  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’s rowing careers.  He was a dynamic captain and was trying to recruit as many Freshmen into the PCBC as possible.  In this he was very successful and the club embarked on a period of considerable success under his leadership.

It took me a long time to adjust to the rhythm of reading economics.  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.  I cannot remember his name.  That did not fill up much of the week.  Only one of the lecturers provided guidance on books to read in between lectures.  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!  Even so I doubt if I did much reading for him.  We always went to Tutorials in pairs.  My companion at these was Peter Mansfield.  Strangely enough we remained doing Tutorials together for the full three years of the tripos, although we had absolutely nothing in common.  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.

The only university club I remember joining early on was the Mountaineering Club.  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.  In the Christmas vacation I went on a week’s trip with the Club to the Climber’s 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.  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.  In addition, if I was to join in the club’s expeditions, it would conflict with my rowing commitments, and rowing was my first priority.  So I resigned.  The other members of the group at Tryfan were fanatics; one of the evening’s 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!  One enjoyable day I remember was doing the Snowdon Horseshoe in a blizzard.

I wasn’t particularly well off at any time during my years at Cambridge.  Having failed to win a scholarship I missed out on that source of income.  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).  But these scholarships were withdrawn from those starting National Service after the end of 1947, so I missed out on that source of income.  On the other hand I was extremely fortunate.  My grandmother used the money she would have left to my father to set up a Trust Fund for Dennis and myself; I’m 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.  I imagine my father, poor man, must have been giving me an allowance.  The Trust Fund was for £10,000, which in today’s money would have been worth £300,000 or so.  It produced an annual income of around £300 a year; I guess this would equate to about £9,000 in present day terms.  I lived on this.  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.

My letters for the 1950 Lent Term are mostly about rowing.  I was in the Pembroke first VIII for the Lent Bumping Races.  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.  Later in the term I joined with James Crowden to enter the University Junior Pair Oar races, the Forster Fairbairn Pairs.  This involved training every morning so that, in addition to training in the VIII in the afternoon, as well as coaching, I was pretty busy.  James and I did surprisingly well, losing the final by only one second.  This involved a lot of morning rowing.

My parents were in the throes of moving from Little Mount to a smaller house, Highwood Corner[1], about half a mile away.  In a letter home in late April I am congratulating them that they had bought the house.  Then everything went wrong, since they could not sell Little Mount.  The housing market was upset by the outbreak of the Korean War in June and I suppose big houses were not in demand.  They eventually had to sell Highwood Corner, without ever having lived there, and stay on in Little Mount till the market was more favourable.

I went back early for the May term to row.  My first letter home relates that ‘I was back rowing on the river only about a couple of hours after I arrived here….and I have been out every day since then.  The VIII is not going too well but I hope and think it will improve soon.  There is quite a long time before the Mays anyhow.  They are on the 7-10th of June.  I am working fairly hard as well as rowing as my exams are not far away.’  In the next letter I write ‘My exams start a month tomorrow so that I am really having to get a bit of work in between then and now.  I am doing my best, although it is very hard with all the lovely weather outside.  However, once they are over I can relax for a bit and there will only be my rowing to worry about then.’  The exams were from May 29-31st.  I got a 2.1 and was pleased with myself.  The May races were only a week later so my free time was very short.  The races themselves were always a time of considerable stress.  The first division races did not start till 7pm so there was a long day’s wait every day, wondering what the day would produce.  We did badly, being bumped three times.  The May Ball was on June 13th and Joan Warren came as my partner.  It was my first real ball as an adult.  I can’t say I remember much about it except that it was a wet night and not good for punting.

I went home for a few days at the end of term before going to Henley for the regatta.  We all met up at the Five Horseshoes[2] 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.  We were all in strict training but this really meant little more than no alcohol and some strenuous walks.  We considered the rowing itself enough exercise; a far cry from today’s emphasis on weight training.  Pembroke entered an VIII for the Ladies Plate another VIII for the Thames Cup and IVs for the Visitors and Wyfolds.  I was in the VIII in the Ladies and the IV in the Wyfolds.  We lost the semi-final of the Ladies to TrinityCollege, Dublin and the Wyfolds IV was knocked out in the first round.  All good experience.  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.

After that I spent three weeks in August at the ‘Coach and Horses’ in Llangynidr.  I kept a diary of that holiday and include it in full for interest, but as a separate appendix.  I have no idea how I spent the rest of the vacation.

At the end of the summer term I had been elected President of the Pembroke College Boat Club.  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.  This post carried a certain amount of kudos in the college and I was very proud.  It did require a considerable amount of time, however, and left even less time for economics than in my first year.  To do the job justice I was allowed to stay in College.  I was given an enormous room on the ground floor of M staircase.  It is now I think the Junior Common Room.  Then, it was all mine; a huge living room, with separate bedroom and separate washroom, and large windows looking out over the FellowsGarden.  I changed Supervisor.  I was taken in hand by J.W.F. (Wilkie) Rowe, the College Tutor in Economics.  He had a poor reputation as a university lecturer and wasn’t a very inspiring supervisor either.  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’s supervisor, Professor Joan Robinson.  Wilkie had dropped out of the group to care for a sick wife and had lost his inspiration.  I got to know him very well later, when I was working in the School of Agriculture, and we became good friends.  He had a lovely house on the Broads, his passion was sailing, and I stayed with him there once with Sarah.  To my surprise and delight I got a 2.1, which was remarkably good considering that only 15 people got a 2.1.  And no one got a first.  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; ‘I suppose I must have done more than I thought’!  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 ‘I hate this Principles mark.  Having got a First at Henley, please see to this other.  It was very nice of you to time your bump last Saturday right in front of me!  Quite thrilling.’

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.  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.  I entered that with Marcus English[3] but we lost the final by three seconds.  I had to organise the crews and the coaches for all the events and decide who went in which crew.  All very time-consuming but satisfying.  I had a few days in the University Trial VIIIs but was soon rejected.  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.  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.  I could pull my weight but I was not heavy enough for a University crew.  I might have made bow in the Blue Boat but I never performed well on bow side.  I tried rowing bow side in the Pembroke Lent Boat but with little success.  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.

And so back to the Five Horseshoes at Henley for the regatta.  I have kept a detailed diary of the regatta period which I have reproduced, even though it is full of rowing!  The PCBC did very well.  At Marlow regatta the VIII won the Marlow VIIIs.  At Henley the VIII won the Ladies Plate; James Crowden (rowing with Brian Lloyd of Lady Margaret Boat Club) won the Silver Goblets.  Tony Fox won the Diamond Sculls.  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.

Most of the rest of the month of July I spent sculling. I joined Marlow Rowing Club.   I bought a sculling boat which I kept at the club and spent hours sculling up and down the river trying to improve.  I entered sculling events at Kingston and Molesey regattas and lost them both.  I just wasn’t cut out to be a sculler, much as I enjoyed it.  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.  This is written up in a separate diary.  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.  Its surprising now to realise that food was still rationed in 1951.

I had about ten days at home before setting off on a hitch-hiking holiday to France and Switzerland with Patrick Creswell.[4]  Our first objective was a Youth Hostel at Thonon, on the south side of Lake Geneva in France.  We got to Geneva by boat and train via Paris and then hitch-hiked in the heat of the day along the lake.  Nobody would stop; I can’t say I blame them, two gangly youths with huge packs.  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.  I had my first fondue there.  We walked in the hills and experienced the joys of the Alps.  From Morzine we went to Chamonix and tried to go up Mont Blanc as far as we could.  I sprained my ankle half way up and had an agonising walk down and was unable to do much for several days.  Somewhere about here we picked up two French girls who were also hitch-hiking; I guess it was Patrick who did the picking up!  Michele and Dédé were couturieres from Paris and a very jolly pair for two staid English!  I guess their company did us a power of good, particularly as I could hardly walk.  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.

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.  I remember it as a period of calm autumnal weather and rowing on an uncrowded river was a sheer delight.  The IV went very well but we still lost the final of the light IVs later that term.

I had handed over the presidency of PCBC to Toby Coghill as I wanted to do more work.  He had come up the same term as me and been in all the same crews.  He was later to row in the 1952 Blue Boat, having also got a half-blue for ice hockey.  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.  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.  It was a spacious room with separate bedroom and washroom, if rather cold in the winter.

Once again I changed Supervisors, but still with Peter Mansfield as my fellow student.  My new Supervisor was Professor Joan Robinson, a formidable and brilliant woman.  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.  She was very small with a bun of grey hair tightly drawn round her head.  She was very left-wing and attended a conference in communist China while she was teaching us.  Reading one’s weekly essay to her was an ordeal, but stimulating, one was never allowed to get away with any sloppy ideas or expressions.  I was very fortunate in having her for my supervisions.  If anyone could have got me a First it was her; unfortunately nobody could.  Her husband, E.A.G. Robinson, was another economics professor and I went to his lectures once a week.  He also worked in the Treasury and his Saturday morning lectures were usually a critique of that days ‘Economist’ magazine’s editorials and immensely stimulating.  One felt one was in touch with the real world; a rare occurrence in lectures on economic theory.  He was subsequently very helpful in trying to find me a job.  His brother, Christopher, was Bishop of Bombay.  I got to know him well when we lived in Delhi.

I worked as hard as my rowing commitments allowed.  I used to get up at 5 am every morning (well, most mornings) and worked through till lunch time.  That left the rest of the day for rowing; at least that was my summer routine.  In the winter and spring, with their shorter days, there were fewer hours available for the river.  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).  But my winter and spring rowing was not very successful.  We lost the Light IVs to Lady Margaret and went down one place in the Lent bumping races.  But then everything came together in the summer.  The May Boat was extremely fast, the fastest of all the college crews.  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.

Immediately after the May Ball we went out in the coxless IV and it went like a dream.  We entered the Senior IVs at Reading regatta and won easily.  We were clearly the fastest coxless IV in UK at that moment.  It was an Olympic year and the crews had not yet been selected.  Unlike today when the competition is intense, the whole selection process was comparatively relaxed.  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.  We entered.  There was a complication, however.  Four of the sparemen from the Olympic VIII, who had not made it to the VIII, wanted to put a IV together.  One of these was James Crowden, who asked if they might share our coach, Finlay Best.  We had to say yes, a big mistake.  We lost the final to this crew, rowing under Leander colours.  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.  I think of all the great regrets of my life this failure to win that race was perhaps the greatest.

This Leander crew, however, were not going to enter for Henley.  This left us clear to enter the senior Henley coxless IV event, the Stewards Cup, with a good chance of winning.  We also entered the coxless IV event for schools and colleges, the Visitors Cup; as well of course the VIII event, the Ladies.  Our chances of winning all three events were high.  All started well.  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.  In the Stewards we did not race till Friday.  In the Visitors also we had a bye on Wednesday and on Thursday the other crew withdrew.  Then disaster struck.  On Friday the weather conditions changed from calm to stormy with a strong tail wind whipping the water into choppy waves.  The way our boat was rigged was for calm conditions, so that when one comes forward the oars are close to the water.  In rough conditions this means one catches the waves.  Fred, the boatman, raised the level of the rigging but as it turned out he did not raise it sufficiently.  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.  We were against Lady Margaret, who we not had a chance to bump in the Mays, and they were fast.  However, we lost by a third of a length, less than a second, in a fast time.  But we were shattered and it was all so unnecessary.  The same thing happened in the Stewards.  We kept on catching our oars as we came forward, slowing the boat down.  We lost to London Rowing Club by 2 ½ lengths.  The third race of the day was the Visitors.  We were feeling tired by this stage but had got used to the conditions.  We were racing First and Third Trinity.  Half way through the race we clashed oars and the umpire made us stop and restart.  But we won by a comfortable margin.  So come the last day of the regatta we were only in one event.  But we had got things under control by then.  We were racing Trinity Oxford, stroked by the Oxford President Christopher Davidge and with another blue at bow.  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.  We won by a length and three quarters in 7 minutes and 15 seconds, a record time that lasted 13 years.  The winning time for the Stewards was 9 seconds slower.  If only…

This really ended my active rowing career.  I never raced again and any other rowing I did was for fun.  I did some more coaching in 1954 and 1955, including the Goldie VIII, but that was about all.  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.

 

---