Class of the 1980s: my Balliol reunion

No portrait of Boris Johnson hangs in the hall of Balliol, his old Oxford College. Hardly a surprise, since serving prime ministers do not have their pictures painted and he has moved on only recently. But as things stand, it seems pretty clear that Boris will never go up alongside this distinguished Oxford institution’s other three prime ministers, H.H. Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath. I worked this all out last month while attending a Gaudy, or reunion, at my old college for the years 1984 to 1988. Boris matriculated the year before I went up but as I stood in the hall before dinner looking up at the walls, I clearly remembered seeing him standing in the quad together with Macmillan and Heath halfway through my time at Balliol.

Balliol was a happy time for me. Like many others going up to Oxford, I felt I had blagged my way into a place at this college which was ranked so high on the academic Norrington Table and which, according to Anthony Sampson’s Anatomy of Britain, was defined by ‘effortless superiority’.