I began the first year of my four-year honours philosophy degree course in Mental and Moral Science in Trinity College Dublin in October 1957.

Because I knew my decision to study philosophy made little career sense to myself or anyone else I decided to take in addition the lectures leading to a Diploma in Public Administration, then offered as a two year evening course at Trinity. I also participated gladly in a family compromise under which my motorbike was traded in for the part-purchase of two mopeds, one for me and one for John. We both felt we were on our way to independence and it was an indication of the accelerating change of pace in Ireland that John would enjoy much earlier than I would what life had to offer in a progressively more prosperous and liberal society. But whatever my introspections at the time, I now have not the slightest hesitation in rating my first three years at university as among the best in my life.

No one was more surprised than I was by my immediate examination success in the Mental and Moral course. My early prominence as a university debater was perhaps more predictable, given that I had stood out at school and in the Dalkey parish youth activities as someone who was never afraid to act in a representative capacity and who could speak up loudly and clearly when called upon to do so.

The Trinity College of the “fifties” was a wonderful theatre for the fortunate arts students of that generation. Student numbers had not yet got out of hand. Honours arts courses were still seen as more prestigious than science, engineering and computing. In most courses there were students from abroad or from Northern Ireland, including mature young Britishers with the experience of army national service behind them, bringing exotic ideas and personalities into what might otherwise have been a cosy provincialism. That many of these “visitors” were in residence within yards of their lecture rooms created wonderful social opportunities, limited only by college rules, which still insisted that women undergraduates should be off the campus by 10 p.m., unless they had special permission from the Dean of Women Students.

The physical space in which arts students were free to perform was quite magnificent. Right in the heart of Dublin, opposite the Bank of Ireland in its magnificent old Irish Parliament building, the Trinity College campus was enclosed by stylish granite walls and railings surrounding its park and quadrangles. I saw these quadrangles as multifunctional spaces facilitating the rehearsal and performance of everything imaginable in student life, the College as theatre complex.

A series of squares structured the complex. The arched main entrance to the College penetrates the range of buildings dominating Front Square inside. This square is partially closed to left and right by the majestic columns of the College Chapel and the Examination Theatre. The cobbled square separating these facing buildings opens out into a wider space across which the flights of steps leading on the one hand to the Dining Hall and on the other to the Old Reading Room also face each other. The cobbles are then cut off dramatically by looped chains protecting the fine lawns of Library Square.

As on most university campuses, the permanent architectural challenge is to site and design succeeding waves of construction and development. Trinity College Dublin has handled reasonably well a history of expansion from its Elizabethan foundation to the end of the 20th Century. Front Square and its cobbled extension are of a piece. The high, domed, campanile which stands astride a pathway bisecting the Library Square lawns is pitched in line with the main College entrance and provides a focal point for the campus. This trajectory from the entrance and through the campanile is unexpectedly arrested by the red-brick of the Rubrics, the College’s oldest surviving buildings. They are flanked to left and right by the Graduates’ Memorial Building or GMB and the elegant lines of the College’s famous library.

The rear windows of the GMB look out on another square, known as Botany Bay, for many years an exclusively residential square with tennis courts in the middle. Narrow breaks at either end of the Rubrics lead into New Square whose lawns and trees are framed on two sides by undistinguished granite-faced buildings. The right hand side, in line with the library, is closed by the attractive, if incongruous, Venetian profile of the College’s Museum building, housing in my time the Engineering school and a number of widely used lecture rooms and theatres. Behind the museum, the expansive green of College Park offered cricket and rugby pitches as a divide between Arts, the University’s old front end, and Science, its new back yard.

The Head of the Philosophy Department, Professor E.J. Furlong, lectured to the first year Junior Freshman Mental and Moral Science course in a dingy lecture room on the first floor of Front Square. He introduced the course as combining a review of the major historic figures of Western philosophy with critical consideration of the main issues in contemporary philosophy. In each term a number of key primary texts would be examined, beginning in the first term with two works which must still be among the best introductions to philosophy: Descartes’ “Meditations” and Bertrand Russell’s “The Problems of Philosophy”.

Professor Furlong pointed out that the study of philosophy could take a number of approaches: looking at texts in a historic context, their background environment and their position in the work of the author; seeking to clarify and explain the writer’s views and arguments; analysing and criticising a philosopher’s conclusions in pursuit of better answers. Freshman courses in logic, psychology and the history of philosophy were seen as introducing students to some of the tools of their trade.

This TCD approach to philosophy proved ideal for me in the first three years of the four-year course. The introductory courses in psychology, Aristotelian and symbolic logic, and the history of philosophy – this latter taught through Hegelian eyes, that is, dismissing the whole of Scholasticism as worthless – were, for the most part, basic and easily grasped. For the rest, I bought most of the recommended primary texts so that I could read them intensively in my own time and independently of library reading room hours.

Heading the class in my first Freshman examinations I saw no reason why I should not be able to maintain this performance. There are few better feelings than seeing your name topping the list with first class honours as you jostle with your fellow students to see the results newly pinned to a notice board.

The main dynamics for change in my view of life came through my encounters with my ten new classmates, eight men and two women.

Both the women in the class, Liza Collins and Frances Jane Ffrench, were older than their classmates. Liza Collins was, literally, a quiet American who had decided to study in Dublin. One noticed that she was a compulsive smoker. Frances Jane Ffrench was already a College character, reputed to have tried and failed several arts degrees. She had independent means and lived in a fine house with a housekeeper in Wilton Place near Ranelagh. Her main passions were journalism and politics and she was on the board of Trinity News, the undergraduate-run newspaper, and published pamphlets – at least one of which, on proportional representation, may have been influential in national politics. It was said that her political force came through a family relationship with Sean Mac Bride, a former chief of staff of the IRA who founded the Clann na Poblachta party after the 1939-45 war to introduce more radical nationalist and social thinking into the Irish political scene, dominated otherwise by the monoliths of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, each with their particular pro- and anti-Treaty civil war inheritance.

Five of the eight young men seemed destined for ordination and careers in the Anglican Church in Ireland and England. Of the three I know about, one almost made it to be Head Chaplain of the Royal Air Force, the second had a brief but colourful career in holy orders in Northern Ireland and Canada before moving into the Canadian civil service, the third, Jack Daniels, my closest friend of the three, went into teaching and journalism, eventually settling happily with his Dublin Jewish wife for a long and successful spell as the Careers and Appointments Officer of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Each of the remaining three classmates seemed to me to have already lived interests and experience that I could never hope to match.

Hugh Glanville was Irish but older than the rest of us. He had already some knowledge of and reading in philosophy and seemed to be known to and respected by Professor Furlong. He was already in residence in a magnificent set of rooms on the top floor of Front Square with a view of the Bank of Ireland and College Green. He was engaged to a girl with the most fascinating eyes I had ever seen.

Mike Leahy was elfin in appearance and manner but was very English and had the plummiest voice I had ever heard. He was also older than most of us and had a man-of-the-world experience belying his appearance. He had completed his national service in Kenya and rode grandly between College and his flat on one of those white purring Ariel motorcycles which came complete with elegant splash guards, mitts and pannier bags.

Archie Ablett was something of a mystery. Tall and dark with close cropped hair, he looked like a gentleman prize fighter and never appeared to take any interest in the course or College life, other than his token attendance in the occasional lecture. He was from South Africa, lived in digs in Mount Merrion and played the jazz clarinet in a pub with a bohemian reputation at the corner of St. Stephens Green, the Green Lounge. I remember him for his declarations that the sexiest things one could do were to ride a motorcycle in the nude and to drive a car in bare feet. Having forgotten or never thought to take the opportunity of trying either, I doubt I now have the strength and suppleness needed to drive a car in my bare feet. I feel sure in any case that Ablett had in mind a jeep on the veldt rather than a Toyota Prius in suburban Dublin.

Read more: 1958 – The Hist