Melvyn Bragg “went up” to Oxford University in 1958, sporting an Elvis Presley look-alike haircut. Bragg cites, for example, the notorious Bullingdon Club, which was considered a breeding ground for political eminence in the late 1950s. He mentions that the club coughed up two of Britain’s “worst prime ministers, who went on to become spivs” (David Cameron and Boris Johnson). There were, though, few women around the Oxford campus in Bragg’s time. “The lack of women was a terrible deprivation,” says Bragg, 86.

Source: Irish Examiner February 25, 2026 01:30 UTC