Steve Lundy .....
.....attended St. Olave's Grammar School, a state school in Orpington, Kent, where he was able to take Latin at both GCSE and A level. He has learnt Greek at Oxford. It was quite late in his school career that he decided to take his interest in Classics further:
" Until I was sixteen I wanted to do English or Modern Languages at university. The way Latin was taught until then was a lot of amo, amas, amat but little text or history. It was when we started looking in detail at authors like Cicero and Virgil at A level that I became a lot more interested. My teacher suggested I go to the Greek summer school at Bryanston, which confirmed my interest. When it came to applying the next October, all my applications were for classical subjects. Like many people, when I was applying I was rather intimidated by the gravitas of Oxford, not sure what I was letting myself in for, thinking I'd be spending four years with my nose in a book. Don't have any illusions: you will work very hard at Oxford, but you will also play very, very hard, if you have a mind to. I think I can claim to stand testament to that.
"It's always disappointing when the media have their annual Oxford-bashing event around the latest applicant turned down by Oxford elitists. I can say in all honesty that I have never encountered prejudice because I didn't go to Eton or Harrow, and I have never met or heard of anyone in such a situation. Unfortunately, because of how the University is represented, the image perpetuates itself because potential applicants from non-traditional backgrounds are reluctant to apply to a supposedly elitist institution."
© C@O 2003: Classics at Oxford, Faculty of Classics.
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Last updated:
February 15, 2007.
Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LU.