The oldest fresher in town

Rachel Johnson talks to the

Hon. Sir Oliver Bury Popplewell, 76 and sprightly with it, who is reading PPE at Oxford

He may have caught your eye at the Freshers' Fair for first-year undergraduates, held in the examination schools on the High Street. He was signing up for the rugger club and the law society; he was a tall, athletic student wearing a navy jersey, chinos and black loafers. Or he may have caught your eye elsewhere over the past three decades, for the tall figure at the Freshers' Fair was none other than the Hon. Sir Oliver Bury Popplewell, the High Court judge who pretended ignorance of what Linford Christie was packing in his 'lunchbox', and decided

that Jonathan Aitken's sword of truth was not so simple after all.

Yes, believe it or not, this pillar of the establishment, a man whose life has been like an effortless golden thread linking Charterhouse to Cambridge to the Bar to the Bench to the presidency of the MMC (Monopolies and Mergers Commission); a man who has four strapping sons and a dozen grandchildren; this man has now become an undergraduate at Oxford, where he is reading PPE at Harris Manchester College on Mansfield Road, just across the road from the department of geography and environment. Fle is 76 and will be 79 when he graduates, old even by the standards of Harris Manchester, where undergraduates have to be at least 21 to apply.

So Justice Popplecarrot, as Private Eye inevitably christened him, has come up, to be the oldest undergraduate the ancient university has ever matriculated, and when I go to his rooms I find myself thoroughly charmed. So charmed that I abandon my planned little joke about whether that was a lunchbox in his pocket or was he just pleased to see me, because Oliver, as I have been asked to call him, offers me sherry from a tumbler and proudly shows me the kitchenette and bathroom he shares with another undergraduate, and I somehow could nothing common do or mean, etc., in this former Justice's memorable presence.

Popplewell lives and works in a simply furnished small study-bedroom with bare cream walls. There is a desk, upon which his essay on the law of diminishing returns awaits his attention for Wednesday's tutorial on micro-economics, along with a battered paperback called Keynes and After; a laptop with a 'magical bit of kit' enabling him to dictate his essays just as he dictated his judgments to his trusty clerk; there is a bed bumpily spread with a candlewick counterpane in a cosy shade of plum; a television which does not work; a hangingcupboard, and a window giving out on to the quad and the chapel, its Burne-Jones stained-glass windows gleaming on this golden Oxford afternoon in the third week of Michaelmas term.

On the way down I have read his memoirs, called Benchmark, and I commend them to anyone who, as I do, likes to read of distinguished men who lead honest and interesting lives, but are not too pompous to recall the time that they drank the last of the milk during rationing (the fiasco of the half-pint of milk is on page 54) or the time they went to France and were disgusted to discover that an éclair is filled not with Jersey cream but creme patissiere (the unfortunate incident of the éclair is on page eight). At Cambridge, apart from drinking his roommate's milk and meeting his beloved late wife, Margaret Storey, he obtained a prized cricket blue and played masses of rugby.

'It was a time particularly when the midnight hours were spent in earnest discus

sion about reforming the world,' he remembers. After a few pages devoted to descriptions of his career as a player of Eton fives, squash, and a detailed account of a match he played as full-back for the Queens' college third rugger fifteen, he reveals his wish, the wish he is now fulfilling. 'I very much regret I did not have,' he writes of his law degree, 'a grounding in, for instance, economics or philosophy.'

I have met few, if any, who achieve their lifetime's wish as they approach their ninth decade, but it is a great pleasure to meet them as they do, and I first asked Oliver how he had swung it, to beat others for his place at Oxford, reading PPE, class of 2003.

'My wife died in April 2001. I retired officially from the Bench last August. I had finished my memoirs. I was sitting at home in Atnersham, and I was thinking, how am I going to occupy my mind? So I wrote to Oxford, just in time, and the admissions office were terribly helpful, and told me the best bet was Manchester, on the grounds that I would not be completely surrounded by 19-year-aids there.'

Oliver Popplewell was asked to submit a piece of written work (he sent in a lecture he had given on the Arrogance of Power), and was asked for three sponsors (one of whom was Michael Beloff of Trinity, which was handy). All this was acceptable and he was summoned for an interview, and was made to sit a one-hour paper (his first written examination for 30 years). In his interview with the principal, Sir Ralph Waller, he was, in the nicest way, lectured about the ethos of the college.

'Waller told me I had the same chance of getting in as anyone else, and told me that he chose graduates on the basis that they would contribute to society after they graduated,' Popplewell recalled.

'And did you bristle and say that, aged 76, you had already paid back a considerable portion of your debt to society?' I asked. 'No,' replied Popplewell. 'Though I did think I'd done my bit, I just said "Thank you very much."' For three weeks, Popplewell rushed downstairs to the mat every time the postman came, like a teenager waiting for his exam results, until a fat package from Harris Manchester confirmed his place. 'My children were absolutely hysterical.' he says. 'Kept asking me if I was going to take a gap year or go to the Freshers" Ball. Though it's so expensive here — £7,500 a year — that I feel like taking out a student loan, repayable in 50 years' time.'

Popplewell elected to live in college, saying he 'wanted to participate in the life of the college'. He takes me on a tour. 'I don't know who anyone is, I just say "hi" to them all,' he whispers, as he pushed the door of the Junior Common Room (of which he is the most senior member). There is a bar in the corner, a pool table, a board with the usual notices about student help-lines, racism, drugs, and matriculation photographs. I spot my hero, scowling in white tie, looking gloomy. 'Terrible waste of a Saturday morning, that matriculation ceremony,' he complained, as we examined the photograph together. 'And terribly shame-making, having to wear that commoner's gown.'

So, I ask of the university's oldest undergraduate, what do you think of Oxford? How does it compare with the Cambridge of 1948? And what do you expect to 'get out of it', as admissions tutors might say?

Well, it is clear that he is here to work, and he says that the academic standard is much higher at Oxford today than it was at his Cambridge, where 'anyone could get in'. He turns in quite early, if he's not being invited to guest night at high table somewhere (and as a knight, a widower, a former athlete and distinguished retired judge, he will have, believe me, no shortage of invitations). He is 'quite a swot' but finds the economics quite hard. He does not see romantic possibilities within college, although he notes with approval that no one seems to care where undergraduates are at all any more; there is none of that 'ridiculous climbing over walls on the dot of ten'.

He is, in fact, participating with gusto in the life of the University, as promised. He has offered the Oxford Mail a column on his undergraduate life, but has not yet heard back; he is a diligent student, according to his tutor Dr Lesley Smith, who was, she told me, very pleased with the clear style he showed in his essay on Rousseau. 'My first tutorial was like appearing before the Court of Appeal for the first time,' Popplewell claims, but I do not believe him.

He has started already on the second volume of his memoirs, to be called Hallmark, for which I give him an anecdote. In preparation for our meeting, I have telephoned Edward Faulks QC and asked for background. Faulks asks why I am interviewing Popplewell now, after his retirement. 'Because he has become an undergraduate at Oxford,' I say. 'He's reading PPE.' There was a long, astonished pause. 'PE?' rumbles Faulks. 'Are you sure? At his age?'

And Popplewell is very much looking forward to the next few meetings of the Law Society. He says he might give a miss to the do planned for this week at the Zodiac club with the legendary Groove Armada (and yes, he does ask me, 'And what is the legendary Groove Armada?'). But he is very much on for the talk at Lincoln next week (guest speaker, Jonathan Aitken) and intends to watch a lot of rugby between tutorials, lectures, and essays.

'People keep saying I'm brave,' he complains. 'You're not brave,' I tell him. 'You're lucky.' And Oliver Popplewell, who is a lot keener and definitely fresher than most first-year undergraduates I know, agrees.