to read. She was devastated and humiliated. I don’t think she ever recovered while she was at Oxford. I was very happy to hear several years later that, soon after she got her degree, she married a Church of England clergyman and had five children. She must have made a wonderful clergyman’s wife and mother.

Although I don’t think I ever exchanged a word with Phillip until long after the war, we met almost daily and I think he knew I didn’t think much of him, and he probably didn’t like me.
Communist students in those days were very serious. “A Communist student must be a good student!” was our slogan. No-one must sleep around in an irresponsible manner. Each of us, if we found a mate, must be faithful, and no-one must get pregnant.

Not long before there had been a celebrated case of a fifteen-year-old girl who had been raped by half a dozen soldiers and made pregnant. Two wonderful women doctors had persuaded a surgeon to perform an abortion for her in hospital. Up to that moment it had been a crime to abort except in the case when the pregnant woman would die if the pregnancy continued. They were trying to change the law to make it possible also where the victim would suffer serious psychological harm if she was forced to give birth. This seemed to them a valuable test case. The surgeon performed the abortion in hospital, backed up by the women doctors. He was put on trial – acquitted – and this changed the law.

These two women doctors were special also. At that time it was impossible to get birth control advice unless you were married and probably unless you already had numerous children. But these doctors would see young female students, fit them up with a cap and ointment – then the safest method – and give them good advice.

So as soon as a couple got together that term, starting with ourselves, the female half would be sent up to Harley Street to be “fitted up”. We knew that if anything went wrong, which was unlikely, we could go back for help.

Peter and I were now making love whenever we could. Luckily the authorities seemed to be under the impression that couple could only copulate late in the evening and in a bed, so no-one bothered about protecting us from ourselves in the morning, or in a punt, or on cushions on a floor.

Peter was now in his last term at Oxford. In those days students reading English had to take Responsions, a fairly easy examination, at the end of their first term, and then nothing more until the final examinations at the end of their three years. The result was that for about two