The Junior Members

Abstract

When St Antony’s opened its doors in October 1950 it had seven graduate students. They lived in a cosy community, with cell-like rooms in the former nunnery. It was from the window of one such room that John Bayley, later a tutor at New College, was first smitten by his future bride, Iris Murdoch, as she cycled up the Woodstock Road. The rooms had character but were poky and rather cold. One student living there in the early 1950s recalled how he was crouched over his gas fire wearing an anorak, when there was a loud knock on the door and it was flung open by Bill Deakin. Beside him stood a figure recognizable even to the student as Evelyn Waugh. ‘This’, said the Warden, ‘is a typical student in a typical student’s room.’ ‘How absolutely ghastly’, boomed Waugh, and they both disappeared.¹