In 1934 I was born in Oxford, at 380 Woodstock Road. The house was right at the end of the ribbon development before it stopped at the roundabout on what is now the ring road. A few years later we moved to a larger, rented, six-bedroomed house at 351. Out behind the house was open land, some allotments, and a clear view down to the Thames, Port Meadow and Wytham Woods. Rus in Urbe; we felt equally at home in town and country.

My Dad (born 1899) worked for the Oxford University Press in Walton Street, where he gradually moved up to become the boss: Secretary to the Delegates. He could be down to work on his bike in ten minutes. A very likeable, intelligent man, he was a scholar at Winchester 1913-18, and at Trinity College Oxford 1919-22. He missed the war by weeks; called up, trained in the Artillery, and then demobbed.

My Mum (born 1904) worked for our family, with the help of a Cook General and a Nanny for the four of us children: Susan, born 1930, born, Me, born 1934, Humphrey, born 1936, and Philippa, born 1938. We had a half-acre garden, which Dad looked after keenly. He grew all sorts of fruit and veg and mowed our lawn. Not much money, the odd holiday in a seaside farmhouse; a typical middle class outfit of the time.

Both parents were keen amateur singers. They apparently met while singing in an country house production of the Gondoliers. They both enjoyed the Oxford Bach Choir (of which I am currently President) conducted by Hugh Allen and later Thomas Armstrong. Mum played the piano some, but Dad had no training, just a natural enthusiasm. Mum’s mother (born 1870) had been a proficient violinist, and attended the Royal College of Music She knew Vaughan Williams and Holst, and the coloured composer Samuel Taylor-Coleridge.

All this 1930s relative peacefulness was torn apart by the outbreak of the Second World War. While Dad stayed in Oxford, working for government publications and being an Air Raid Warden, we were shipped off to Canada; (details in the Canada chapter.)

We all got back together in 1944, shortly before D-Day. Hum and I went to the Dragon School (see under Schools) and Sue and Pippa to the Oxford High.

We didn’t own a car, but went everywhere by bike or bus. For a year the town was full of American airmen from the bases just north of Oxford, “Over

paid, over sexed, and over here”. I well remember truck loads of them roaring past our house; they used to chuck us candy as they went by: “Here y’are kids”.

On the eve of D Day we lay on the lawn as flight after flight of Dakotas climbed overhead towards Normandy, carrying the paratroops who would be the first to start the great invasion. We knew what we would hear on the news next day.

From now-on family holidays were in Wales or the Lake District, walking in the hills by day, reading Shakespeare plays in the evening. I remember Mum as an epic Henry V… For four years we rented the same big house at Abergwesyn, in the middle of nowhere. We seemed to have the whole of Brecon to ourselves; we never saw a soul on our long outings, but fished the Gwesyn and Irfon for small trout. One summer (was it 1947?) we were there for four weeks and it was quite untypically cloudless the whole while. Walking was less popular, but we could eventually swim in the normally icy streams, which was a joy.

Back in Oxford one thing seems striking, seen from today. There was relatively little classical music on the radio (No Third Programme yet), and we had no more than a handful of old 78rpm records. Music was a few concerts a year, or what you made yourself,- mostly at school. Sue (piano), Hum (cello) and I on violin made up an occasional trio. More frequent were afternoons singing Elizabethan madrigals and motets. I have a  vivid memory of sitting round a table in the window of  our sitting room, being directed and inspired by Roddy Armstrong, the brilliant future Cabinet Secretary and later Lord Armstrong. He remained a good friend until his recent demise.

I was given Birthday presents of large, heavy 78s of  Beethoven Symphonies 5 and 6 under Toscanini, and wore them out on our old gramophone with its steel needles. I also saw Furtwängler conduct the Schubert Great C Major with the Berlin Philharmonic in the Oxford Town Hall in 1948,- their first visit after the war. (It would be 50 years before I saw them face to face!)

The “stripling Thames” (as Matthew Arnold called it) played a pleasant role in our lives. On a hot summer’s day we could swim above Wolvercote Village, or hire rowing boats. On the Port Meadow section my brother and I sailed the Cadet dinghy Simois (sail number 368) that we built from a kit in 1950.

By 1954 Dad had been elected President of Trinity College, in Broad Street, with its superb outlook towards the Sheldonian Theatre, the Clarendon Building, and the Old Schools.

The Lodgings was a splendid 3-storied house built by Jackson in 1887. 8 bedrooms suited our family of 6, (along with Granny and her maid) perfectly. The first President to live there was a bachelor! The place had not been modernised or decorated since the thirties, so we were given carte blanche to make major changes, and were provided with a Cook and a Butler.

We had great fun choosing Morris wall papers for many of the rooms. In Dad’s Study the workmen scraped off layers of earlier papers,-only to find the Arbutus we had chosen underneath them all! The huge Drawing Room had not one but two fireplaces. Family Christmases, with growing numbers of spouses and children, were splendid affairs in this happy house.

But only until 1964. In that year Mum succumbed to Cancer that she had been suffering since 1962. Soon Dad retired, and for most us the Oxford connection was at an end. Only Pippa returned with her family to live there.