In my childhood wine was a rare treat; an adult privilege to which I was admitted on special occasions. At my school there was no tabu against drinking (as there was against tobacco). Housemasters occasionally made a mild grog or cup for senior boys. I remember being embarrassed when one Ascension Day (a whole holiday) my companion got very drunk on liqueurs at a neighbouring hotel. It was at the university that I took to drink, discovering in a crude way the contrasting pleasures of intoxication and discrimination. Of the two, I preferred the former.

I think that my generation at Oxford, 1921-1924, was the last to preserve more or less intact the social habits of the nineteenth century. The ex-service men of the First War had gone down. Undergraduate motor-cars were very few. Women were not seen except in Eights Week. Oxford was still essentially a market-town surrounded by fields. It was rare for a man to go down for a night during term. The generation after ours cherished closer links with London. Girls drove up; men drove down. Cocktail shakers rattled, gramophones discoursed jazz.