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Memories of the Early Leaver's Scheme
Campbell Black is a bestselling author, writing under the name Campbell Armstrong. He has written over 20 novels, including 'Jig', 'Mazurka', and 'Mambo'; and the play 'And They Used to Star in Movies' which has been performed in Edinburgh, London, Dublin, Chicago, and Boston. He has won two Scottish Arts Council Awards and has been twice nominated for the Prix du Polar. In 1963 I was working as a clerk in an office in Rayners Lane, one of many dire jobs I'd had since I'd left Glasgow and school a few weeks before my Higher Leaving certificate. I'd drifted to London - to the grave concern of my parents - to become a 'writer'. I had no other ambition. Instead of books and plays, the only things I sold with any success were toilet-seats in a hardware shop in Earl's Court. I'd also clerked in a paint-manufacturing company in Acton, and kept an incomprehensible ledger at the Smith's Potato Crisp factory in Cricklewood. The list of jobs was long and not very interesting, but I had the naive idea that they'd somehow provide unprocessed material for writing. One evening in the Rayners Lane office, the Office Manager told me I was a misfit. He showed me a cutting from a newspaper, a description of something called the Early Leaver's Scheme at the University of Sussex. This was an innovative undertaking, designed for people who for one reason or another hadn't completed their School Leaving Certificates. Apply, Black, he said. University hadn't been a part of my plan. But Alf, the Manager, was adamant. If I didn't apply I was stupid, and he'd fire me. I wrote to Sussex, applied for the forms, filled them in, returned them. A response came back asking me to write an essay on the sixth chapter of Ayer's Language Truth and Logic. I read the chapter, wrote and re-wrote my essay, and posted it. A reply arrived from Professor Patrick Corbett, inviting me for an interview. An interview! I hadn't expected one and I was flustered - what kind of questions would I be asked? What did they want to know? Why had I selected Philosophy as a major in my application? I imagined a massive interview room filled with dark-cloaked Inquisitors who'd interrogate me for hours, and I'd stammer and stutter and be exposed as a fraud. The reality was a delightful surprise. No menacingly vast room, just Professor Corbett's pleasant ground-floor office with a view of lawns and young trees. Patrick Corbett was friendly, offered me coffee, then sat sprawled behind his desk with a vague air of curiosity while he scanned my application. He asked me a few questions about A J Ayer, none of which I remember now. Halfway through the interview, the window opened unexpectedly, and a man stepped into the room. He was a tall, quick-witted American in modish clothing. He introduced himself as Ted Honderich and said he preferred windows to doors, which seemed logical to me. I liked him instantly, as I did Patrick Corbett. They were an easygoing pair, friendly, inquisitive, funny, although I don't remember being asked any more questions about myself. The interview over, Patrick Corbett walked me out of his office. His parting words were, "I don't think you've seen the last of Sussex." I moved across campus in a kind of daze. Was he telling me I was going to be accepted? I walked past the Library, where people were lying on the grassy slope reading books. The morning was sunny and promising. I realized I wanted to come here, to Sussex. A few weeks later I received a letter of acceptance, and at the start of the 1964 term I found myself a resident of the Glencoe Guest House in deepest Kemp Town, and plunged into a week-long round of wine-tasting social events. Plunged is the key word. I fell in love with Brighton instantly, shabbiness and ostentation side by side. I inhabited the student haunts of those times, The Royal Oak, The Queen's Head, The Wellington, and the small sea-front pubs that seemed to attract people who were somehow vaguely outside the law. At the University I was assigned a Personal Tutor, Stephen Metcalfe, a kindly man, a scholar who preferred Romantic Poetry to whether or not his cardigan was properly buttoned. I tried to study Formal Logic with Professor Aaron Sloman, whose formidable tutorials, conducted in a temporary annex, were beyond my reach. I was inept, although Sloman was always patient. I went to a couple of lectures given by David Daiches and had a long conversation with him about his love of Scotch. And Margaret Boden, with her enlightening intelligence, was a wonderfully generous instructor. I felt - well, privileged and lucky to spend three years at Sussex, and although I've been back to Brighton at different times over the years, the place feels a little haunted to me now. The faces are unfamiliar, old haunts vanished. The University has grown and changed, and Sloman's annex office has been dismantled long ago. Patrick Corbett has gone, and so has David Daiches. Ted Honderich, I understand, is elsewhere. It's different, but it's still Sussex, and that thought always gladdens me.
Campbell studied philosophy at Sussex from 1964 to 1967, entering under the Early Leaver's Scheme which allowed those who had left school without completing their School Leaving Certificates to apply for places at the University. Here he revisits his application process, and the unique characters which came to represent Sussex for him: