Bragg is leaning out of the train window, eyes fixed on this beautiful girl, her thick, black hair, tanned complexion, hourglass figure.

Deep into the engrossing second volume of his memoir, 18-year-old history undergraduate Melvyn Bragg is having supper in Oxford with Sarah, his (secret) fiancée, visiting from his home town, Wigton. He’s failing to persuade her to come to his college ball in spite – possibly because – of the description by his best college friend of girls in long gowns with flowers in their hair, dinner parties, dancing on the lawn, punting at dawn. An unusually silent Sarah has pushed aside her half-eaten chicken, roast potatoes, vegetables. “I keep thinking of the long dresses and the dinner parties,” she says. “It’s not for me. It never will be. It’s another world.” A world Bragg has readily embraced – and the embrace has been mutual.

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