I have had a sharp reminder of Eng Lit at UCW Aberystwyth in the 1950s. Although there were fewer than 1,100 in the entire student body, first-year English classes were commonly large, and included many ambitious to proceed to Honours. At the beginning of my second year, I remember taking my place in a queue winding up the stone staircase to a tower room in the old college building on the seafront and, when my turn eventually came, facing the entire English Department (five of them) seated around a large table, Professor Gwyn Jones at the head. ‘Yes?’ he said, as though my mission was utterly indeterminate. I said I would like to do Honours English. He glanced at the papers before him presumably listing first-year examination results, since no other evidence of effort or progress existed. ‘Oh, I don’t think so’, he said. At this point I suspect a great many of those who had entered the room before me (or came after) turned meekly and left. I persisted and was allowed entry to first-year Honours, on condition my results at a forthcoming Christmas examination were up to standard. In the outcome, the crowd of aspirants was successfully whittled down to six.

I hope I am not unjust in saying that (to a student’s perception at least) there was little evidence of collegiate, or even companionable, shared interest in the English department. Lecturers ploughed quite separate furrows across the broad field of studies from Anglo-Saxon to the nineteenth century. They arrived from different abodes in and around Aber and, having stood at the lectern in ...