He ends up on his own, beginning to see Cambridge has more to offer than a three years' muckabout in a festering fen. 'Very clever indeed . . . This portrait of la vie de boheme universitaire should raise squeals of outraged delight .
It's Cambridge in the early 1960s. Ben Birt, an intellectual Brando from a grammar school, sees the University through proud, bawdy and anarchic eyes. Classless but deeply class-conscious. Brought up on Shakespeare and the classics, much influenced by contemporary French and American, he talks a vivid new language.