The King's Hall and College of Brasenose, Oxford:

Some Recollections

I was recently asked to scribble some reminiscences about my life and times at B.N.C. These were followed by a profound editorial silence and so they are reproduced here in order to avoid oblivion.

I was a very happy bunny to be invited warmly into Brasenose, the King's Hall and former home of the legendary Hell-Fire Club (preferring not to go down the Bullingdon Club road), as a postgraduate working on a DPhil in astrophysics (1973-1976). My research supervisor, John Peach, was inter alia Senior Dean, which also impressed his colleagues elsewhere.

I found the atmosphere welcoming, and in some ways agreeably eccentric, and rapidly attuned to the College's life. My rooms were in the New Inn Hall Street annexe and this place was a throwback to my school years in various ways: zero heating, bath tubs together in a shared space and darkling vertiginous flights to be negotiated in the wee small hours when Nature called. I wonder whether such things continue nowadays. Meanwhile, hearing the Carfax bells and the uproar from the Union Society's Thursday evening debates provided sufficient external spice whilst supposedly studying. Well, sometimes attending those debates and meeting present and future world leaders and others such was also very memorable!

A visiting American lady was astounded that i could not identify any "local eateries" and we also had an interesting confusion about the terms "public" and "private" schools. Moving on, it was a great pleasure to be allowed to play the grand pianoforte in the Chapel, when nobody was around, and i was thankfully never pressed into doing more.

One evening there was some contretemps amongst my colleagues on the landing, resulting in someone being punched in the face, although again that was par for the course back in the school days of yore. Nowadays this would undoubtedly have led to all sorts of dire judicial proceedings.

On one occasion, sitting down for dinner, there were mutterings from the staff about how we students were "living off their backs", a guaranteed recipe for indigestion. I hope that it was intended somewhat with tongue in cheek, although unfortunately i did not get to the bottom of that at the time. My dear Scout, for in those days that august institution still existed, used to burst in every morning at the crack of doom and fling back my curtains, uttering "Good morning, Sir". After a misunderstanding about the Christmas Bung, in January this was attenuated to "Morning". Sadly, shortly afterwards, the duties of Scouts were curtailed and this ceremony became a thing of the past, although it was a pleasure to go through another such traditional rigmarole with him involving gowns on the day of graduation, when honour was, i hope, finally restored.

Jon Godwin
(B.N.C. 1973-1976)

"Last seen setting out across the Gobi Desert on a motor bike..."

[End of document, updated to 19 December 2014]