I hadn't been to Oxford in years, so when I visited recently I felt like a time-traveller. Walking around, I kept recalling the university I had first encountered as an undergraduate 25 years ago this month. I found myself thinking things like, “I'm walking through Christ Church Meadow checking my emails!” Back in the day, students didn't even have telephones in their rooms.
Oxford works hard to look timeless. If you stand in the average college quad at night, you can't tell by looking around whether the year is 1613 or 2013. Yet in fact the university has changed, quite quickly. The Oxford I knew - shot through with sexual harassment, racism, dilettantism and sherry - has been replaced by something quite professional and money-conscious.
It wasn't very hard to get into Oxford in my day, as almost all students - whether from private or state schools - were drawn from the small British upper and upper-middle class. Moreover, most were men. Still, we'd all needed luck to survive the rather random admissions process. For instance, one tutor I knew unapologetically favoured tall, blond public school types.