The first I knew of his arrival was seeing a taxi stop outside Frank got out and walked up the garden path. This was the first time that party politics had ever entered my Oxford world.Frank never wrote or telephoned, but one day, unannounced, he turned up in Oxford at the house of my tutor and his family, where I was living. There was the slump - we didn't use words like recession - and many people were starving There was no welfare state and it was all very shocking. Gradually, I came to realise that the old Oxford world was coming to an end In my last year, things began to change very quickly. I was surrounded by a group of exciting men friends but it was a very cerebral life. After endless arrangements, Frank arrived for tea, but I thought that he seemed rather taken with one of my friends.At Oxford, nearly all of my male friends were gay, but of course we didn't have a word for it then.

In those days, even something as innocent as afternoon tea meant that I had to ask a don and other people to be present. Although we didn't see each other, I used to think about Frank a great deal, and decided that I would like to invite him for a cup of tea at my college, Lady Margaret Hall. Some of us were supposed to go to the theatre afterwards but he couldn't possibly join us in that state and had to be taken home.Both of us were totally absorbed in our separate lives, Frank's in London and mine in Oxford. To celebrate, Frank gave a party at the Cafe Royal, to which I was invited He got terribly drunk.

He opened his eyes and said, 'I'd like to kiss you but I can't'I was in my first year at Oxford; Frank and Hugh were in their final year Both of them got Firsts. Once again, the handsome man with the brown curls was fast asleep on a sofa I went up to him, bent over and kissed him on the forehead. He and Frank shared digs, but, because of the Ball, Hugh had hired a room in college for the night. I wondered who his partner was and how she had allowed him to fall asleep like that.Shortly afterwards, Hugh Gaitskell was my partner at the New College Ball. I was puzzled to see this staggeringly handsome young man with lots of brown curls, curled up. He was dressed in the Bullingdon Club uniform, a blue coat with white facings. I was walking with friends when I saw this figure asleep on a couch.