I meant...

[Q] You really meant to go to Chemistry?

I meant to, to study chemistry, and it was really intended by my family that, whatever happened, I should go to Oxford, which was where my father had been before me, because sadly he had no boys, so I was the best he could do... to manage.

[Q] Now, where there any difficulties in getting into Oxford from that school, I can imagine some?

Yes, then we decided to... after I'd taken school certificate and got exemption from London, matriculation for the subjects we took, we went over to Oxford, to the staff at Somerville, to ask what I had to do to do chemistry, and we found I wasn't qualified to come to Oxford at all, because, at that time, I had to have done Latin, which I had not done, and a second science, which I had not done; so I spent a year getting these extra qualifications before I tried the college scholarship exam.

[Q] But that went all right?

That went, that went all right. As, as my very, very old science tutor at Somerville said, my knowledge of the second science was a bit weak.

[Q] That was presumably physics, was it?

No, it wasn't. That was the awful thing. It should have been physics, according to the fine print of the register for the examination regulations. It was in fact botany, because botany I could get a certain amount of help with from a friend of my mother's who lived near us. So there it was.