Throughout childhood and adolescence, I dreamed of going to Drama School. However, as a Harrison Scholar in Merchant Taylors’ School for Girls sixth form, Crosby, it was assumed that I would stay on into the third year sixth to take Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams. I couldn’t bear the thought of being the dowdy swot in that small, lonely classroom by the school library. Despite great live music in Southport and Liverpool every weekend, Southport felt provincial and stifling. I could barely wait to leave home.

I applied to, inter alias, York and Warwick; both 1960s new universities, embodying a radical, new counterculture. I wore a Mary Quant, fuchsia pink wool cape coat to my interviews. The more intellectually challenging the interview, the more I wanted to be in that department. At York, we discussed King Lear and Samuel Beckett, not my A-level curriculum. I was hooked. 

My local authority paid undergraduate tuition fees, and I received a minimum maintenance grant. My father topped this up with £100 a term to live on. I lived frugally and always within my means. If I wasn’t preparing my own food, Langwith dining-room salads and Vanbrugh dining-room puddings were the best value for money. 

I joined the student drama society and auditioned for The Ancient Mariner. In the sixth form we had spent our gym lessons learning Martha Graham technique, so I readily espoused our director, Andrew Wistreich’s approach to 1960s experimental theatre making. We won the National Students Union Drama Competition that year. Throughout my undergraduate career, I continued to act in theatre productions, and even one film version of Silas Marner, directed by Tom Gutteridge. I also directed, including a Jean Genet play for which I designed an indecent poster and flyer, a Yeats play for dancers, and a Pound translation of a Japanese Noh play, accompanied by original music written by Dominic Muldowney.  

My personal tutor was Richard Drain, a hugely influential figure. I still remember his outdoor, theatre workshop seminar on William Blake's poetry. Years later, I saw how it had influenced a fellow seminarian, David Thacker, in one of his RSC productions. Brian Gibbons was equally influential; for his Shakespeare special subject module, I played Diana Capilet in a York Arts Centre production.

The university was six years old when I arrived there; the atmosphere of academic experimentation was heady. The English department was experimenting with different assessment patterns: my final core module was on twentieth-century literature; it was entirely assessed by seminar performance. My seminar presentation on James Joyce Ulysses earned me a first-class mark. At the end of the term, my professor gave me a present of Ezra Pound’s The Spirit of Romance. This was a pivotal moment in my life. 

In late Sixties Britain, like many young women I was a Women’s Libber; we enjoyed the sexual freedom the Pill gave us. I wasn’t yet a feminist. The English department was overwhelmingly staffed by men yet concerns about the disastrous power imbalance between a middle-aged male professor and a third-year student weren’t on the agenda. 

Favourite memories? Missing my cue as Ophelia before the ‘Put out the light’ bedroom scene, in a Central Hall production. Eating a whole bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate from the vending machine after a day-long drama rehearsal with Bill Pryde. Margot Livesey trying to persuade me not to agree to go and live with my professor; she somehow managed to keep her relationship with older men — including John Gorman of The Scaffold — on her own terms. F.R. Leavis repeating himself by delivering the identical graduate seminar on the identical section of text from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets two weeks in a row, without anyone daring to interrupt and point this out. An exhibition in Heslington Hall of Sidney Nolan’s Shakespeare Sonnets series; an inspiring introduction to ekphrastic art. 

I had a clear choice at the end of my undergraduate degree. Either join Andy Wistreich and his Street Theatre Group, to live in a condemned council house in Manchester for a year. Or stay on and do a research degree on Ezra Pound. As an only child, I wasn’t sure I could cope with communal living. The prospect of living with a professor twice my age while I was a postgraduate research student was also daunting, but I was drawn to the academic rigour it would entail. 

I enjoyed the luxury of six years researching the influence of Medieval Occitan literature and culture on Ezra Pound’s poetry. It was a challenging topic and at times controversial within the department. My professor was the department’s expert in Eliot and Pound, but for obvious reasons, my supervisor was Tony Ward. Tutorials mainly took place in Derwent bar over lunch time, while he told me about the progress of his latest novel. I felt vindicated for all my persistence and effort when it came to my viva with external examiner Eric Mottram. He assessed it as outstanding and excellent. 

In my sixth year of research, I began applying for academic posts. My one job interview was with the University of Warwick. I was offered the job of Lecturer in North American Literature and Culture. I took it and stayed there until my retirement. During my probation, my mentor was Clive Bush, one of Eric Mottram’s acolytes! 

Shortly after my thirtieth birthday, I left my professor, by now my husband, and became a feminist. At Warwick, we campaigned for best practice procedures around sexual and racial harassment. My feminism also led me to become a founder member of The University of Warwick’s Centre for Women’s Studies. 

York provided me with an education, grounded in the great tradition yet inspired by sixties countercultural ideas and practices. This in turn enabled me to have a rewarding and varied academic career. Students with intellectual curiosity who engage with their subject come from all economic and social backgrounds. University admissions criteria can favour those who receive a privileged education, not necessarily the most exciting, independent thinkers. This is why I am a supporter of the University of Opportunity Fund. As John Dewey said, it’s ‘impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now.’ My university education taught me to learn from events and become autonomous, not to be a dutiful daughter. For a thriving university, and a resilient, dynamic society that facilitates everyone’s full potential, we need to support and nurture students from diverse backgrounds. Supporting twenty-first century students is the least baby-boomers can do to say thank you for our debt-free higher education.