| Description | Interview with Dr. A. Cain, recorded on 26 September 1986, by Jennifer Carter
Transcript of Interview:
J So you came up Dr. Cain in 1950 as a local chap did you?
C In 1946.
J Sorry 46, yes you graduated in 50.
C Yes straight from school at the age of 16.
J Goodness, that was young.
C Well I think we did come up to University a little bit younger in those days, than people do now. It was possibly slightly unusual, but 17 was not uncommon and coming up in 1946 of course there were a lot of ex-servicemen, who were arriving at University. Some of whom, possibly in their late 20s. Now this made an enormous difference to the age spread of one's class because there I was at 16, and indeed some of my closest friends were probably about 28. Now it is almost a culture shock to come straight from the rather protected atmosphere of school to …
J Which school were you at?
C Aberdeen Grammar, and to come straight from that, to University environment which up to that point, you'd still have been slightly protected, because everybody else would have been 16, 17, 18 but then as I said, you came across people of 28, people who had had a slightly horrendous experiences in life. Like being through the Burma war and things like that.
J Yes that's a bigger age range of course even than the youngest boy at school and the oldest sixth former, isn't it?
C It practically is, yes.
J So that was very interesting in itself, being of that generation?
C Yes and it meant that you had to grow up pretty quickly.
J Did you feel kind of pushed into the background by these older more sophisticated men?
C No, not at all. I don't know why, I don't know if it says something about them or if it says something about me, but, that we were all able to adjust. I think there might have been some people who rather avoided the company of the older ones. I found myself drawn to them, because I felt they had something to offer, and they treated me like an equal. You know they didn't treat me as a schoolboy.
J Must have made a akwardness for the staff, as well, teaching such a mixed group. Were you conscious of that or not?
C I don't think so really, no. No I don't think so. Teaching, well I suppose there were two levels of teaching. There was the kind were there was the presentation facts, and especially in some of the language courses, where obviously you have to be taught how to write French prose and so on. In the English Literature courses, I think we were extraordinarily fortunate in having Professor Bickerstaff, as a professor, who I know a lot of people didn't like him. He threw things at you.
J Literally?
C No he was the gentlest of people, but, no he threw out thoughts and if you didn't care to pick them up, well too bad. There again it was rather a sink or swim thing. I found him enormously stimulating and he was one of the great characters. There was I think still are great doubts as to whether he enjoyed being in Scotland at all, because when he died about the late 60s and I wrote to his widow and she wrote back and said how much Professor Bickerstaff had enjoyed teaching Scottish undergraduates. And then I had a letter from his daughter, who said "Father absolutely hated the whole time", because he had been very much accustomed to the Oxbridge approach, which was his teaching method. That he'd give a lecture, and then when we were in our honours years, we had individual tutorials, writing a weekly essay and you went up in fear and trembling, to Professor Bickerstaff's house, a very grand one in Queen's Road, and you read it to him.
J Oh absolutely Oxford style.
C And he sat there in deathly silence, not making any comment, sometimes you might see a frown cross his face, or something like that and then he'd comment on it, and very very fairly, always. But there was a certain amount of good give and take. I mean he would suggest, other lines of approach or something like that. I mean he never said to me "God, you're being stupid" or anything like that.
J So you had the formal lecture, and you had at least in your senior year or years I mean, individual tutorials?
C Yes we had two.
J But no small group teaching I imagine in between or am I wrong about that?
C No small group teaching, except of course that once we got to the honours year, we were not a large group.
J Even in English?
C I think honours English, there were 32 of us.
J And that was one of the bigger classes was it?
C Indeed yes, and then we all had a special elected subject on which you would ultimately write a paper and I had elected in fact to do the History of English Language, so I, we were very much more reduced than that. I think there were only 3 of us, who were down on that and that again was once every week.
J Who was the expert on that?
C That was Dr Jane Robertson, who was an absolutely marvellous person, now alas also dead. Very clever woman, not a good lecturer alas but for some reason, people who have very much despised her because they despised the subject I think. Nobody, very few people liked doing history of language, but they really took her to their hearts because I remember Graduation evening, we actually took her out to dinner, down to the Funfair at the beach. Now this was a very tall angular gorky woman in her late 40s, 50s or whatever and somehow everybody liked her a lot.
J Well you must have done indeed to do such a relaxed evening as that.
C And also that she liked to come with us.
J Yes that's fascinating. What about women students, did you have many in the English class?
C Yes, especially in the first two years as we call it ordinary and advanced English because that's all part of the ordinary MA degree.
J Which a lot of people took up.
C Which a lot of people took and as so many of the women students were really basically wanting an MA, an ordinary MA for teaching qualifications, so of course there would be that. By the time we got into honours there were certainly fewer. Gosh …
J In your class which was 30 about?
C I can't remember, yet indeed, does that show that they were awfully anonymous or that we were terribly sexist. Three possibly, at the most, I am afraid I can't remember who they were.
J Of course Bickerstaff was supposed to be very anti feminist.
C Yes he was terribly anti women altogether but, no I don't remember any sort of sexist feeling among students about women at all. They were very much accepted.
J Just as part of the community?
C They were just part of the community yes. I suppose if any distinction was made at all, there was an elitist one. We were a very elitist and I suppose particularly those of us who were taking honours and I know among my own particular set, because there was a little set, and we were frightful intellectual snobs, now that I look back on it. Though at the same time, it was rather fun, you know we did discuss the veritys and the state of the world and so on and we put everything to rights because it was the late 1940s and we had just gone through this major social revolution, which we thought was going to set all the world to rights you know. This had been the war to end all wars.
J And you were "talking about Jerusalem"?
C And we were talking about Jerusalem of course, and we were fairly politically involved, not to the extent well say the late 1960s, but we were idealists and you were at the best liberal, or probably socialist and you know you thought a marvellous world is going to come to pass.
J All in a rather idealistic way, not in the sense of card carrying members of any party?
C No I wasn't aware of that very much. I wasn't a party member in fact I never went to meetings of the Socialist Society or anything like but we just assumed that this was the way that life was going for ever and ever. The Welfare state was with us and how splendid it was.
J And yet actual conditions in the late 40s must have been still fairly tough, sort of rationing and things?
C Oh they were yes and looking back on that, when I think there were the shortages. I mean even in those days I was smoking and you couldn't get cigarettes or you had to go from shop to shop to try and get them. Not of course that we had very much money.
J Well I was going to ask about that if you don't mind saying, I mean did you have a grant of any kind?
C Well I can tell you exactly. I had a bursary from the University which was awarded because I had passed what we called the Bursary competition.
J Which still goes on I may say.
C Which still goes on indeed. Well I came out with one of the top four, so I had …
J About a hundred and fifty pounds?
C Seventy pounds but then of course University fees were only nineteen guineas a year. I was living at home, my parents were not rich by any means, in fact we were upper working class I suppose. So my parents were making enormous sacrifices, that they were keeping me, you know when I could have jolly well have gone out to work at the age of 18 and become a clerk in the civil service or something like that but then there were the jobs one did, tutoring was a great thing.
J Oh?
C Yes you got hold of some child and more or less did his homework for him, and you were paid something like three and sixpence, old money, an hour and well this was the sort of thing that gave me my pocket money. So that I could just turn over all my bursary to mother for my keep. Not obviously that it did keep me.
J You were the first of your family to go to University?
C I was the first of my family, well I was the only child, so it was possible. I think it would have been impossible if there had been two of us.
J Had you set your own sights on University or were you pushed that way by school?
C No for some, I've never thought about this but I had always assumed and in a strange way my parents had always assumed, that I'd go to University.
J I wonder if that is part of the Aberdeen tradition, you know a place with a University within it, in other words one wonders whether you would have made that assumption living in a non university city, possibly not?
C I think there is a good north eastern tradition for this. I am sure my mother would far preferred that I had become a minister or even gone into medicine but I think they were a little bit amazed by what my course was. No I do seem to remember from the age of 12 or 13 onwards thinking, it was more or less assumed, "Sandy's brilliant, he'll go to University".
J To the local University, no question of trying elsewhere?
C Oh no absolutely none, I mean it was just Aberdeen because I am sure that would have been impossible in those days.
J In terms of fees and so on.
C Yes.
J Fascinating, so you lived literally on your bursary as an undergraduate, what about when you became a postgraduate, was that immediately consecutive on …?
C Ah well when I graduated I got a Carnegie scholarship which was three hundred pounds a year.
J Wealth indeed.
C In fact in 1950 that was a lot of money and I went to Paris and this again slightly upset the whole scholastic pattern, but well …
J Why Paris because you were an English Language specialist?
C Yes and I went to Paris to study comparative linguistics. I had made up my mind on that, terribly esoteric and I think one reason was that I did want to get out of Aberdeen. I found it very very constricting even at the age of 20.
J 20 you would have been by the time you graduated, which is young.
C Yes indeed very young and then I came back for a year, again I got about three hundred a year, and living at home and this was then very comfortable because when I went to work at the British Museum in 1954, I was only getting four hundred a year.
J A proper job?
C That was a proper job, yes and I was having to live in London.
J Carnegie must of course made a lot of difference when one reflects, to Scots because I imagine that an English undergraduate, or recent graduate placed as you were might again have had a hesitation about embarking on a post graduate degree?
C That's right. Well the Carnegie thing was splendid because of course it was only given for study outside Scotland.
J I didn't know that.
C It allowed you to study in England but you could not do another post graduate in Scotland. I never studied the reasons for this.
J So your postgraduate degree was awarded from where?
C Well I came back finally to Aberdeen, so it is an Aberdeen PhD.
J Coming back to your undergraduate days, you said by the time you had finished your course you felt Aberdeen was constricting, in what way?
C Ah well, well one had tasted the bright lights, there were the occasional visits to Edinburgh, London. We generally hitch hiked, and I'd been to Paris. I had a summer school in Grenoble, a couple of months, so you know I had seen outside Aberdeen. And oh dear yes we were complaining about that there's nothing to do in Aberdeen.
J And was that true or was it just youth, it was literally true?
C It was literally true. There were cinemas, the theatre was very very poor, never anything to see there.
J No dances, no coffee bars, no night-clubs?
C Oh certainly not, goodness me. Well no everything closed down at 10 o clock, and to a great extent we made our own pleasures of course. There were the University societies, okay they only went on till about half past nine, you would try and find somewhere where you could have a cup of coffee, ten o'clock home and that was that. Oh I suppose considering that we were supposed to be studying, we shouldn't have been out enjoying the bright lights anyway.
J Even if there had been any.
C Even if there had been any yes.
J So where did students habitually congregate, in the Union?
C The Union certainly was a great place. There were one or two well what I suppose were the predecessors of coffee bars, but they were these sort of Italian coffee ice-cream places.
J Yes like Donald's ice cream parlour.
C Yes that's right, of which there were quite a few in Aberdeen. You got absolutely appalling coffee, but nevertheless we stuck it out and we drank our coffee and we would talk. We would talk enormously. The only comparison that I have come across in later life is reading about students in Europe, in the 20s and 30s.
J So you were real intellectuals, I mean?
C Oh we thought we were, yes we tried to be.
J And that was a distinct aim among at least the honours students?
C Yes it was, yes very much so.
J Did you feel yourself as it were cut off from then, well contemporaries with whom you had been at school for example and who had gone straight out into ordinary jobs. Did you keep up with them at all?
C No not really, the ones. No I rather lost touch with them all, not for, well I think once you got into the English class you were so concerned with the people that you met and knew, and liked and these were your friends and rightly or wrongly you started dropping …
J Everybody else, yes.
C Everybody else because they weren't speaking the same language.
J And it was very much the English class, not the University, is that right?
C It was the English class and one or two proriferoles, people who took some English classes and maybe also did Philosophy and French or something but yes as far as I and my closest friends were concerned, yes this was our little nucleus.
J Have any of those friends, remained friends for life, or become famous people?
C I don't think so. Tonight there is really nobody that I've met. You always knew people who were a year older or year younger than yourself of course, but I've not really kept up with any of them. Well I'm leaving Aberdeen altogether going to Edinburgh, that is a great separator and then I was seven years in the States and then you stopped sending Christmas cards even. So you do loose track of people, rather sad about that actually.
J What about if you were this sort of coterie you've described, what was your interaction with the staff. You have spoken of Bickerstaff, and Dr. Robertson was it, other staff were important at all, or were they just cardboard figures?
C They would, oh yes, no they never joined in with us. I don't think we would have dared.
J It was a formal relationship?
C It was very very formal indeed, that they were older, grander …
J Despite the ex servicemen, by the way?
C Yes indeed, yes. But no there was absolutely no, meeting shall we say outside formal class, or tutorial.
J No entertaining in their own homes or anything?
C No I don't think, I think Jane Robertson was the only one because I remember on a couple of occasions, we went round to see her on Hogmanay, and she was very thrilled I think because it had never happened to her before. We would never have dared do it to anybody else.
J First footing Bickerstaff was not on?
C Oh no no no I don't think so.
J Yes that's interesting because comparing your generation with people who were here say in the 1930s, evidently then, despite the much greater formality of relations, there was quite a lot of home entertaining by staff for students.
C Was there, yes, well there just wasn't, it never arose at all that I was aware of.
J What about other forms of distinction in relations. I mean you were a local boy and you say from relatively humble background, was there a consciousness among students of very strong class difference, or relative wealth and poverty and that sort of thing or were you just all students together?
C I think we were all students together. I remember once being very very cross when somebody whom I knew to come from fairly rich parents in the south of England, complaining about being hard up and this meant that he was down to his last hundred pounds and when I was hard up it meant I was down to my last shilling, probably literally, but no I think everybody - well of course in those days nobody had very much money.
J That's true.
C We were still being fairly highly taxed and so on, so even if you were rich and I don't think very many rich people went to Aberdeen University.
J It was still very much predominantly a local University.
C Very much yes, town and Aberdeenshire. We did have people coming up from England because they couldn't get places anywhere else, which again was nice because this was another horizon expansion that you met people from quite different, I am not going to say class, background at least. You know southern English middle class.
J Yes because as a Grammar boy you wouldn't have met people like that?
C Yes that's right, because Grammar school everybody was from Aberdeen City and that was that.
J What else about student days, other than you intellectual friends, did you participate in other student activities?
C I was in the Dramatic Society, which was great fun, then I was also in two other Dramatic Societies unconnected with the University.
J Was that respectable then by the way or was it?
C Oh no no no absolutely respectable, well, heavens we did Shakespeare and things like that, that was quite alright.
J This was before the Fringe and so on.
C Yes oh yes, the plays one did were quite okay. There were the various societies at University, when the two years I was doing French, I was a member of the French Club, that was basically a social group though you did occasionally bring in things that required the use of the French language, so it, you thought well in a sense improving your mind.
J But you must have been rather good at French, if you were able to go straight off to Paris after graduation?
C Yes I wasn't bad actually. Still like to think I am not too bad and, there was the Mermaid Society, now this was a great thing which must have been invented about my time. It was a play reading society, where every whatever, two weeks or every month, somebody selected a play and then the parts were distributed among all the people there, and just read the parts out. Somebody then, presented, and there would be a discussion at the end. That was great fun, I liked that very much.
J Where would that take place, that sort of activity?
C In the Union.
J In the Union, one of the lodges or something?
C Yes you had to, when a new society was formed you had to get permission, oh dear I suppose from the Senate to have it created and then you had the right to have meetings in the Union and you didn't pay anything.
J Yes I see, so dramatics, the play reading society anything else?
C Oh well there were quite a lot of other things going on that you could just drop into. You saw that such and such a society was having an interesting visiting speaker or you know you could just go along. There was I think the Elphinstone Society, which is the Catholic Society, had Evelyn Waugh. So of course a whole lot of people went along to hear that, you know because this was rather a catch.
J Indeed.
C To get him up to Aberdeen. And then we had our own parties and so on at home, my parents were always very liberal about allowing me to have friends in, yes. But I mean it would simply be coffee or something like that, or maybe my mother would bake some donoughts.
J Bake a cake or something?
C Something like that, yes, yes. All very innocent.
J Did you wear togas incidentally in those days?
C No we didn't because of the clothing coupons.
J Oh of course.
C You needed I think two or three clothing coupons to get a toga and those were not lightly spent. So some people had them that had been handed down from …
J Precious relics.
C Yes but the toga was very rare, unfortunately, because I think it is awfully attractive.
J So when you walked about town, did you kind of feel a student and different and did you have sort of particular ideas of the University and the Town or …?
C I'm afraid not no, I don't think I thought about anything like that, you were just somebody who lived here.
J At the University and that was it?
C This is what you were doing, yes I don't think there was anything like a cleavage between Town and Gown.
J There was no feeling against students for example, as there came to be in the Sixties?
C No certainly not. Now I don't know if anybody has spoken to you about Rag Week.
J Not at all, I would be very interested to hear about that.
C Well this is the week where the Students collect …
J Raise money for charity?
C For charity yes and the climax is you dress up on the Saturday.
J And have a torchlight procession.
C And a torchlight procession and everything and people were terribly generous and they just thought "Oh well its those students being daft." And I remember another occasion, I went out collecting for something, oh I can't remember what, like Save the Children and it was very nice just going along the ordinary, busy shopping streets and you know you said "I'm a student and I'm collecting for this" and they'd say "What's it all about" but they would just be alright. You know there wasn't a thing saying "Oh God these students are trying to get money out of us and they should mind their own business and go back to their books or something."
J What about sort of big University events, was there for example a rectorial during your time as either an undergraduate or postgraduate?
C Well yes there was but I'm afraid I don't remember anything about it, no it certainly hasn't penetrated my mind. I can't even remember who was standing. I don't think there was a great political thing about it as there was I think a little later, where I think Paul Robson was one of the candidates, but I think the one that I saw was quite ordinary.
J Quite an ordinary one. What about other sort of big University dos, graduation obviously quite a party?
C Oh that was quite a thing and well there was always two or three big dances every year.
J Black tie?
C Black tie of course obligatory, you wouldn't have dreamt of going without one whereas …
J So you would hire?
C I probably wore my father's I think.
J Oh yes of course.
C You know unlike now where I would go to anything without a black tie, I don't care about that, but no this was quite important.
J So this would be Union Balls?
C Union Ball, Women's Union Ball and the one ending the Charities Week.
J Oh the Charity Ball, so those were the big student social high spots?
C Those were the big ones, yes. I suppose, I wouldn't like to say what percentage went there. Quite a lot, they would have been a lot of people anyway.
J Another impression I have picked up and I would be interested to know if this was true in your experience. I get the impression that Aberdeen was a rather churchy or religious university, with for example the Principal and Staff supporting Chapel on Sundays and this kind of thing. Were you conscious of that or not?
C No. One was aware that there were various societies the Evangelical and so on, that there was Chapel on Sundays, but I mean, obviously wasn't compulsory I mean nothing like Oxbridge. Well it couldn't because we were so dispersed you see. No you could go right through University …
J Without that touching you at all?
C Yes and without any of the sort of extreme evangelicals trying to get at you. I don't remember anybody trying to bring me into the Church or indeed into some funny religion, you know as seems to happen or indeed happened in the 30s with the Oxford movement.
J Yes that's another interesting comment.
C No I think we were making our own Jerusalem.
J Of a different kind.
C It so happened that at that time I was going through vaguely religious phase but there was absolutely no pressure.
J Was that connected with the University or was that based on an outside religious group?
C Purely personal, nothing to do with University at all. I suppose one should try and say something about sex life, which probably nobody does?
J Yes that would be interesting.
C I may say for the record that being gay in Aberdeen was pretty ghastly.
J Yes.
C Absolutely non existent. I wasn't very much, you know there was no Gay Liberation. I wasn't really much aware of other people having very much sex life but in those days one was very very discrete.
J I would imagine yes.
C You didn't really say anything.
J Was this a fixed orientation of yours at school even, before you came up?
C Oh yes.
J And there were other students whom one was aware of?
C I never met one, at least not until my post-graduate. When by that time I was 23 and life was rather different.
J I had wondered about that when you were speaking of the older men?
C Oh well yes, well that might have been something to do with it, that there was an unconscious attraction but I mean there was absolutely nothing sexual there at all. At least not overtly, but it probably did help me to adjust to meeting, working with older men. Though I should also add that some of the ex-servicemen were ex-servicewomen.
J Were they? I hadn't picked up that point.
C Oh yes, there were some ex-servicewomen, so there were women of 23 or so among us.
J What about heterosexual relations, were students all sleeping with each other in those days?
C Oh I don't think they were, I am sure they weren't. They had nowhere to sleep. I mean they didn't have these study bedrooms.
J Study bedrooms with nice duvets.
C With their own keys that they could get into. They were either at home or with dragon landladies, who certainly wouldn't have had any of that nonsense going on.
J Or at the other extreme, the older tradition. I mean did students frequent prostitutes at all in your time?
C I never never heard of that. I am afraid the whole existence of prostitution in Aberdeen is a closed book to me. I didn't know anything about it.
J At all, interesting.
C Nothing. I was probably very naïve.
J Goodness, Paris must have come as a shock when you moved there?
C It did yes yes.
J When you came back, I mean presumably you came back to present your thesis, if not to study?
C I came back to put in a final year, and then completed.
J That must have been very strange mustn't it?
C That was a shock, and that made me more determined to leave Aberdeen.
J Did you come back and live at home then?
C I came back and lived at home after having two years on my own in Paris.
J My goodness it must have been a double adjustment, first away and then back …?
C Yes that's right. However I had a lot of work to do and that sort of kept me busy.
J Did you have any sort of feelings about the University when you came back to it that second time, I mean did it seem to you disappointing, diminished, less important than when you had been there?
C No and its very interesting that among the people I have been meeting this evening, most of them are ones that I knew my second time round.
J Rather than your undergraduate contacts?
C Yes, for some reason they seem to be the ones. I mean it is not true to say there the ones that I have kept in touch with but they seem to be the ones who come back, this particular weekend.
J Oh well that's nice. Postgrads I imagine were a very small band?
C Oh terribly small. I think when we graduated PhD, there were two of us in Arts only and the others were in science.
J Goodness, tiny isn't it?
C Yes and in fact the other one was my cousin, who is here this evening who I have not seen for years.
J Who is that as a matter of interest?
C Joyce Collie, and she was doing something in English Language as well.
J Fine. Well is there any area we haven't covered that you think we ought to have done?
C I think we've done fairly well. I spoke about the good qualities of the teaching, especially in the English Dept. I think in some of the other Departments there were very many bad qualities because it was still an extension of school that you were taught and you took down notes and you were expected to regurgitate at the end of the year. Possibly different once you got out of the first two years of your subject and got into the honours.
J The ordinary classes were schooly?
C But the ordinary classes, I think still very very schooly. I think in a way that would not be acceptable now. Well as an outside subject for example I did psychology and there was the excellent Rex and Margaret Knight teaching who are splendid, brilliant people but in your ordinary psychology year you just took down their notes.
J They hammered it out and that was it.
C And that was that and you got a good mark.
J What was Rex Knight's great attraction do you think, I mean so many people seem …
C Oh his charisma, definitely.
J Difficult to put that little finger on.
C Yes, he was dynamic, he spoke well. You did listen to every word he said. It wasn't always very interesting.
J It was a pure trick of personality?
C It was a pure trick of personality, because I had taken the course rather with misconceptions, because I thought, oh well psychology might help with English Literature and so on, but of course he was far more interested in physiological psychology and sensation perception and so on, intelligent measurement so I am afraid it did not contribute to broadening of understanding life. And then you probably heard about Donald McKinnon in Philosophy.
J Who is still around
C Who is still around. I didn't know that he was back here.
J Yes he retired from Cambridge and bought a house here.
C Well of course I went to ordinary Moral Philosophy for a year, it wasn't, I didn't need to take it but I just went there to listen.
J For the fun?
C Indeed it was fun and, because you never knew what he would get up to next. He was, I think he was the last of our great eccentrics, banging his head on the wall saying "God oh gods its difficult."
J And then French, who would have been teaching you then?
C Professor Roe, we had, who was a bit of a showman. His French was very good and when he corrected your French, he was probably right.
J And the young Dudley Wilson perhaps?
C No, no, who else did we have. Abrioux
J Oh Abrioux yes, he was still around.
C Yes in Canada isn't he?
J And also has a house in Aberdeenshire.
C Oh has he, yes.
J The whole family must have been through the University.
C Yes I think I noticed from the graduates roll that his, that at least one of his sons had come through. Stoker, who did French History and very boring he was too. I hope this isn't …
J You will have a chance to edit the transcript.
C No French was one of the things that was taught very much like a school subject.
J In a mechanistic way.
C Yes, nice to have some opportunity to have French conversation, and of course we had nothing like the mechanics.
J The recorders and all this?
C No we were very much dependent on the lecture/lectrise to have a chance to hear real French.
J That reminds me of something else I was going to ask you, particularly as someone studying English, were you very much a library person, did you spend a lot of time in the University library or did you tend to rely on your own little stock of books?
C I relied very much on the University library but I took the books home.
J Yes I see, so you weren't somebody who worked there?
C No I did not work in the Library and now that I am a librarian professionally, I think that the library service provided was extremely poor, but I think that relates to the time. You know the books were there and all that the staff did was to check them out. There was no information service. We now think of the University library as being the powerhouse of the University, but I am afraid in those days it was rather a sleepy, dozy place. It was a reading room and let's face it, for people who were in digs.
J It was essential.
C It was the only place to go. I mean at least at home I had a room of my own and I could go and I could sit …
End of Interview
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