We first visited New Orleans as a family in 1991, the year we purchased 58 South Street in Epsom and I became an owner-occupier at the age of 43. In various combinations the Scamblers made several more trips to this European corner of the US through the 1990s and into and beyond the noughties: most… Read More »
Sandown Lodge had provided a very pleasant home, but circumstances changed during our time there. When we moved into number 45 in the early 1970s many of the flats were rented via companies to young families in transit. Into Thatcher’s 1980s Freshwater’s policy shifted. While those of us who rented had a degree of protection,… Read More »
I was reared on the Daily Telegraph and began my undergraduate life at Surrey University considerably misinformed. I recall in the early weeks of year one term one defending this Worthing stalwart and arbiter of common sense when confronted by Pete Kirby, a patient if querulous mature student and member of the Communist Party. But… Read More »
If my new life within UCL required adjustment, other more intellectual matters offered succour. I have mentioned my use of Habermas’ theories in my edited collection Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology, published in 1987. We academics in particular learn from others all the time, whether we realize it or not; but Jurgen Habermas and Roy… Read More »
I have alluded to UCL’s ingestion of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in 1987 without dwelling on it. It was an abrupt and disconcerting experience. Sold to us under the rubric of a ‘merger’, it was clear from the outset that the nomenclature of the University College and Middlesex Hospital Medical School would be temporary.… Read More »
The sun and sea of Marbella was the precursor to several family trips to the Greek Islands. In 1985 it was Rhodes, in 1986 Kos, and in 1987 Santorini. Moreover these package-holiday excursions were swiftly succeeded by visits to Crete, Cyprus and Aegina. Most of these were eked out of the opening week or two… Read More »
Thatcher aside, the 1980s had their joyful moments. Some of these were experienced abroad. I earlier recounted two month-long car journeys around Western Europe in my mid-teens. Scrupulously planned with the aid of AA maps and counsel, and no less finely costed by my father, Ron, these were spent under canvas in sites quite primitive… Read More »
When Margaret Thatcher was Education Secretary under Heath (and he was always to feel that she should have remained ‘under him’, hence the record-breaking ‘great sulk’), she abolished free milk in primary schools. To us babyboomers this was a deeply symbolic act, bucking the ethos and thrust of the welfare state. It was a marker… Read More »
Harold Wilson, who was born in 1916, managed to avoid Eton. He was educated instead in northern grammar schools prior to entering and winning a ‘first’ at Oxford. He excelled at statistics and a spell working as a research economist for Beveridge and a meeting with G D H Cole led to an interest… Read More »
My birth in 1948 fell into Atlee’s period of office and I have by the time of writing this witnessed a dozen Prime Ministers. To understand Thatcher’s 1980s, the decade we have reached, I have to add a few paragraphs on the five of the 12 who preceded her in the early stages of my… Read More »