When I arrived at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in the autumn of 1950, it was as though I were arriving home.
This was because LMH was like a country house in the middle of a green garden on a river – and on this island I always felt that I had been born.
As children, we lived at 8 Chadlington Road, Oxford, more or less throughout the war; while my father – the prison reformer Frank Pakenham, later Lord Longford (1905-2001) – who had been invalided out of the army, exercised his profession as a don at Christ Church.
The next field contained the Dragon School, to which my brother Thomas Pakenham (the tree expert and historian) and I were sent.
All this meant that North Oxford became in our imaginations a kind of rough kingdom. We swam in the river and played rugger on the field, and we were the monarchs – or rather the dragons – of the place.
Sometimes we ventured down into the city, perhaps to steal into our father’s rooms in the quad at Christ Church. Why didn’t he stop us? I don’t think he noticed that we were in the room.
Occasionally, in later years as undergraduates, we got lost going home, turning the wrong way on Magdalen Bridge. That was when an Indian student, whom we approached, said to us with great scorn, ‘There’s only one way to North Oxford.’
‘I think he’s a prince,’ said my friend and fellow student Marigold Hunt (1932-2024) – later Marigold Johnson, the social reformer, married to writer Paul Johnson – with some keenness.
‘Then he’s not a very polite prince,’ said I haughtily. The whole way back to LMH, we argued about the politeness – or lack of it – of princes and whether it was better or worse than in ordinary people.
In the end, Marigold decided to put an end to the discussion. We retraced our steps and found – to Marigold’s joy – the prince (or not), still sitting on his bench.
Nothing if not fearless, she strode towards him, stopped in front and declaimed, ‘I am Marigold.’
The Indian looked up, jumped up and flung himself on the ground before the tiny, very pretty doctor’s daughter.
‘He is a prince,’ said Marigold with great satisfaction, walking in the opposite direction without a backward glance.
The only expeditions Thomas and I made regularly outside Oxford were to Ireland. The journey was long – taxi, train, boat, bus and finally pony cart in order to reach Dunsany Castle, County Meath, home of the writer Lord Dunsany, our great-uncle.
Now and again this meant spending the night in London on the way. One famous occasion turned out to be the night that all the world – as it seemed – celebrated Victory over Japan.
This was so-called VJ Day, 15th August 1945.
On this date Thomas was one day after his 12th birthday, whereas I was 12 for the remaining days of August until the 27th. Then, with a deep sigh of contentment, I moved up to 13 – a year ahead of my brother again. We were born within a calendar year – Irish twins.
The coincidence of birthdays and journey meant that our mother actually booked us into a hotel. Just the two of us!
And here was London steaming with rejoicing. I have never forgotten it, and nor has Thomas.
Out into the streets we went roistering. And, the next day, we learnt from the papers that the little Princess Elizabeth had done much the same.
‘We might have met the Corgis,’ said Thomas wistfully.
Antonia Fraser’s The House That Spoke: The History of a Home (Tandem Publishing) is out on 23rd August.
