B E I N G   A N   A C A D E M I C

   The screw kept being tightened more and more and then after 1938 it became over-tightened. In my favourite lending library where I always used to borrow tomes by Edgar Wallace and Karl May, and science fiction, they told me, “Well, I’m sorry – in German: I’m afraid I can’t serve you people anymore.” And then they put up these signs on the cinemas which were after all part of my world, and well, that became quite a fixation for me. I needed this security and security was to do with books, cinemas and above all, academies. The first academy was the English school; that was the first one. And after that I went straight to Cambridge, straight to Birmingham, straight to these other universities, then straight on to London and right afterwards here to Oxford.
[return]    [forward]