A memory of being interviewed by Peter Tranchell in January 1961, from John Irons

John Irons (1961-64) has sent this:

In December 1960, I sat the entrance exam to Worcester College Oxford, my first meeting with the Oxbridge milieu from the inside. The exam took place in a barn of a hall, with a huge, roaring open fire that roasted those nearest it and left the others half-freezing. Having handed in an empty sheet of paper at the Latin exam, and competing for one place with a head boy from another school who had Latin, French and German ‘A’ levels, I had no illusion that year at my grandpa’s Christmas (my mother’s father), that I was not bound for Oxford. However, the entrance exams to Gonville & Caius College Cambridge in January 1961 went better, as Latin was an optional subject there, and I could stress my interest in music. The written entrance exams were always accompanied by lengthy oral ‘interviews’, at which the poor candidate was at the mercy of a quick-witted don or two. Or three. I was called from my room at 8.30pm between two days of exams to come and talk to the Music Professor, Peter Tranchell. He was a Noël Coward sort of figure in a silk dressing gown and a cigarette in a long holder (and gay at a time when homosexuality was a punishable offence at a college filled exclusively with men - it was pure ‘Brideshead Revisited’). Our interview was more a causerie, but the hardest task I was asked to perform was to transpose Bach chorales at sight. I had never ever transposed anything, so my attempt must have been pitiful. But my voice was just right for the college choir. Such are the quirks of fate that change our lives! I suspect it was my willingness to sing for three years, several times a week, in that choir that swung the balance. I like to think so, at any rate.