Oxford today

Naomi Canton and
Dr BS Chandrasekhar revisit
Queen’s College together
In the window seat in Cloisters, looking out
over the moonlit snow that had stopped
falling, and seeing the tower and listening
to the chimes, I said, ‘If I don’t get in here,
I think I’m going to die.’” So Alan Garner
OBE arrived at Magdalen for entrance
exams in January 1953, picturing himself in the
Chair of Greek one day. But after just four terms he
left Oxford permanently for his native Cheshire.
Oxford’s loss was literature’s gain, and this summer
Garner is the focus of a Bodleian exhibition of
children’s literature along with Tolkien, CS Lewis,
Philip Pullman and others, drawing on their papers
at the library.
When Garner dropped out, he had already begun
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, an instant classic of
Alan Garner’s first book,
which drew on old legends
‘At the end of my first term,
I realised that I didn’t want
to go home’
45
children’s fantasy set in Alderley Edge, where he had
grown up. A sequel, The Moon of Gomrath, hurled
twins Colin and Susan deeper into an idiosyncratic
and potent brew of Norse and Celtic folklore, yet
left the plot unresolved: Garner had tired of the
children. But last year, after a 50-year hiatus and
numerous unrelated books, Garner unexpectedly
completed their story with the elliptical and
thoroughly non-juvenile Boneland, in which Colin is a
deeply disturbed astronomer at Jodrell Bank,
searching the night sky for his missing sister.
As Garner, now 78, talks for the first time at length
about his relationship with Oxford, the dish of
Jodrell Bank’s radio telescope looms massively in the
view from his book-lined study in a restored medieval
hall. “I love the contrast,” he says. “The great dish two
fields away.” Ancient and modern, hands and head,
Cheshire and Oxford: such are the poles that have
propagated Garner’s creative spark.
By the time Garner won a place at Manchester
Grammar School and first fixed his eye on
Oxford, well-meaning adults had begun a severe
deracination. For generations the Garner menfolk
had been left-handed craftsmen, but his mother
closed that road by stuffing his left hand up his
liberty bodice to enforce right-handedness. At six,
his teacher washed his mouth with soapy water
for “talking broad” (Garner still uses ‘received
pronunciation’, which he articulates with exceptional
clarity). Meanwhile childhood sickness brought him
close to death, confined him for months in bed and
isolated him at primary school. He discovered
books – an undiscriminating hunger for words
– and a talent for running from bullies.
Garner was able to go to grammar school only
because means-testing meant his fees were waived.
It was a culture shock, not least for his family.
They were thrilled that “Alan was going to get an
education” but, he says, “There was no concept of
what that was. I soon learnt that it was not a good
idea to come home excited over irregular verbs.”
They felt threatened; he felt alienated: the classic
pickle of the first-generation educated (vividly
dramatised in Garner’s Carnegie-winning novel
The Owl Service and its successor Red Shift). He loved
Aeschylus, Homer, and the subtle expressiveness
of Greek regardless. Though at 18 he was Britain’s
fastest schoolboy sprinter and could have had
a career in athletics, the Regius Professorship in
Greek became his goal.
So Garner came to Magdalen as an applicant.
His interview was abysmal until he was asked if he
thought it were possible to break the four-minute
mile. “I said, ‘Yes, Roger Bannister will do it in May
or June next year.’ They were on to me like a hornet’s
nest. I stood my ground: and that was my interview.”
National Service supervened, as a subaltern with
the Royal Artillery. “I was stationed at Woolwich, ➺
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