Difficult, I know, to spend your life dreaming of having gone to Oxford. This year’s offers have just been announced and Cambridge’s are imminent. I feel for those who miss out, but I have some words of comfort.
My late mother told me I announced my desire to study at Oxford aged seven, visiting the city on a family day trip. My earliest memories of the university, though, came from books: those whose dust jackets announced the name of the author’s college – especially when they mentioned taking a First.
My luck was in coming to understand that the Oxford I longed for was always fictional
Books open a world of dreams, and while my undeveloped tastes ran to witches and elves and orcs, I noticed where Tolkien and his friend C S Lewis taught. Middle Earth and Balliol alike were born of imagination fed by print. Later came the wonder of Brideshead, first through the old Granada series, then via Waugh himself.
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