1\. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB?
Joining the Territorial Army as a member of Cambridge UOTC. Regrettably, I cannot claim to have advanced the interests of Her Majesty very significantly, and thus feel very keenly the observation of Dr Johnson to the effect that every man feels a little more meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.
2\. WHAT WAS THE BEST ADVICE YOU WERE EVER GIVEN?
From my father: “Do unto others as they would do unto you, for else you will surely be done.”
3\. WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ?
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but do not understand me to mean that I was reading the thing through from beginning to end, a task that eluded me even as a schoolboy. Specifically, I was re-reading Chapter XXVIII, “The Destruction of Paganism”, a piece of writing to which I often resort in periods of gloomy fin de siècle contemplation.
4\. WHAT WOULD BE THE FIRST ITEM ON YOUR BUCKET LIST?
Finishing my part-time doctorate on the first piece of statute law ever enacted in English, the Laws of King Aethelberht of Kent, dating from c. AD 600.
5\. WHO INSPIRES YOU?
Michael Ventris, who deciphered the Linear B script used by Bronze Age Minoans whilst holding down a day job as an architect, before dying aged 34 in a motor accident. Many academics in a lifetime of full-time scholarship have not achieved nearly so much.
6\. WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL WEEKEND INVOLVE?
Leisured contemplation and gastronomic self-indulgence in Bath, which happily is indeed my lot for some forty weekends of the year, albeit also the principal reason why item 4 remains on the bucket list rather than having been long since knocked on the head, as it should have been.
7\. HOW LONG CAN YOU GO WITHOUT YOUR MOBILE?
It would be more accurate to frame my response in terms of how long I can bear to be with my mobile, which is not an instant longer than it takes me to complete the call in hand. I detest the things intensely.
8\. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE THE YOUNG YOU?
As a young professional specialising in tax, I rather grandly decided that VAT was not a worthy subject on which to expend any intellectual effort, and declined to make it any part of my competence. I doubt that the development of my professional career has suffered too greatly in consequence, but I would not now put the matter in quite such stark terms.
9\. WHAT WOULD BE YOUR LUXURY ITEM ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS?
A Parker 61 Consort fountain pen with a broad nib, ink and paper.
10\. WHO WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO MEET, AND WHY?
H.R. Trevor-Roper, whose writings I have read invariably with very great pleasure, and whom by way of recompense I would have liked to have been able to counsel to take a bit more care over those wretched diaries before making quite such an arse of himself over them.
