Starting at Essex was utterly terrifying; I was the first non-professorial appointment so I was on every committee to plan everything; the first year teaching, on the social structure of modern Britain, didn’t worry me very much because at LSE I had done some extra-mural teaching on the subject; I had taught in Brixton with West Indian immigrants; that was a good education for me because these people did not have an academic interest in the subject but wanted to know how Britain worked; there were four members of the sociology department at Essex – the Professor, Peter Townsend, Herminio Martins, Paul Thompson, Ernest Rudd, and me……..
Read more about these early days from Geoffrey Hawthorn
STORIESofESSEXSOCIOLOGY 