The sorrows of the young Melvyn Bragg
The leaves had yet to fall as Melvyn Bragg left his native Cumbria and arrived in Oxford by train in the autumn of 1958 to read Modern History at Wadham College. Weighed down with suitcases, the grammar-school boy admired the town’s medieval core; but his first impression was of ‘effortless wealth and privilege everywhere’. Oxford was still largely dominated by public schoolboys, but it also featured those who had served in uniform, which added a note of gravitas to the atmosphere. On both counts, it was foreign terrain to Bragg, who pined for the familiar sights and sounds of his close-knit hometown of Wigton: ‘I could close my eyes and
