The philosophy of the school was quite simple - the bright boys specialised in Latin, the not so bright in science and the rest managed with geography or the like.

Cambridge was the place for someone from the Colonies or the Dominions to go on to, and it was to the Cavendish Laboratory that one went to do physics.

This field is not necessarily glamorous, nor does it often produce immediate results, but it seeks to increase our basic understanding of living processes.

My father was trained as a saddler, but in fact as a young man worked in his father's business of rearing and selling cattle, so he grew up in the countryside.