The man lounged unpleasantly in a low armchair, the seat’s buttoned-tweed just visible beneath his considerable form. A cummerbund of pale flesh lay above what was once a waist, leaving his mustard shirt tails to flap like spaniel’s ears. He cupped the back of his bald head, thrusting his belly further into the room, a posture that, we agreed later, was almost certainly designed to intimidate the three of us crowded together on the opposing sofa.

Professor Perkins, celebrated tutor, college fellow, esteemed academic, had spoken just two words since we knocked on the door to his attic room at the top of the narrow, wooden staircase. We were bidden, monosyllabically, to ‘Enter’, by his disgruntled, disembodied voice, and then to, ‘Sit’, by the man now before us. In staggered silence, we each removed from our backpacks pads of paper and binders of notes diligently taken over the course of the week, while he watched with an expression of haughty surprise, as if our presence was an ongoing, personal affront. Our preparations complete, the Professor dabbed at a glaze of sweat on his brow and consulted the lined notebook that lay open on the table to the right of his chair.

‘I take it that you are Campbell, Flint and Harvey’ he said, piggish eyes moving between us.

We confirmed in unison that we were those unfortunate individuals and waited to be asked to speak again. The room was too warm, its bolted windows permitting no relief from the late summer heat, which was celebrated by our peers reclining in the quad below, their voices and laughter audible through the glass, drinks in hand, rousing conversation darting back and forth, smiling faces bathing in the warm sun. Such glorious freedom was not for us, at least not for the next two hours while we faced our first tutorial. I’d completed the required reading and knew the elements of a crime as intimately as those new friends made hastily over the course of the last few weeks; the new concepts had been chewed, swallowed, digested and regurgitated many times over and the Latinate terms rolled around the mind and mouth as I tried to avoid any mispronunciation that would expose my ignorance, my background, and cast doubt on my right to be an Oxford student. It was a feeling that fluctuated during my years within those hallowed walls, but never entirely went away.

The mass across the room shifted and sheaves of paper were extracted from some recess hidden from view. He glanced down at the pages, our essays, hand written and held together, as requested, with treasury tags, and emitted a snort before casting the work at our feet and uttering the unforgettable words,

‘Flint, read your essay aloud until I tire of that Northern accent.’